The Destroyer
by windeer
Summary: All her life Shepard has been driven to kill and destroy, it is all she knows.  Everything she has ever touched has turned to dust.  Now with the collectors dead and the reapers on their way she needs to find another way or everyone will pay the price.
1. The Escapades of Drunken Shepard

_There were faces in the dark, and they had no love for her. In the gloom under the old fruit trees she hid, curled tight with her legs against her chest and her arms over her head. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, terrified to open them, terrified of what waited beyond in the orchard, the rolling gray fields and across the face of the terrible, merciless mountain. She knew if she were to open her eyes the dream would begin, as it had a hundred nights before and would a hundred nights again. They say when a person realizes they are dreaming they should wake up or, better yet, seize control of the dream and bend the world to their whims. If she had such control she could fight the encroaching terrors away, or simply spread her tiny, childish hands to the sky and let the wind carry her up and away._

_She would have liked that. When she finally lifted her head and fluttered one eye open for a peek she knew there was no fighting the ghosts and the air stayed stagnant and still in the gloomy gray air. She struggled to her feet, her naked thirteen year old body as frail as the dry dead grass between her toes, her feet still glued firmly to the earth. She was trapped, and as she cried out in terror and panic the ghosts found her._

_The orchards of Mindoir had been her favourite place in the world once, ripe and fragrant in the planet's endless summer. She could climb with the best of them, keeping pace with her long limbed elder brothers Mehul and Ishayu. Little Nirek still needed a hand to reach the first branch, but once they had hoisted him up the four of them could lose themselves in the sweet green canopy for hours, playing hide and seek among the leaves and picking fresh plums, apples, pears or pomegranates straight off the branches to eat while their feet dangled in the open air. They could peek through the branches, down at the busy streets of the village or up to the magnificent face of the mountain they had named Kanvar, the Prince._

_In the waking world her memories of Mindoir were as sweet as the fresh fruit she had once picked there, warm and innocent as a summer morning. In her dream the orchard was a dead world, the trees blackened, raking the sky sharp as tiger claws, and even the lowest branches on the smallest trees hung well above her desperate hands. The grass was waist length, gray as the boiling sky overhead and if she moved it cut deep across her thighs and belly, so she did not move at all. She stood in the dead glade and stared, up at the menacing peaks of the mountain in the north._

_Her father once told her that mountains were sacred, and that the Prince was there to look after their village. But the mountain seemed bleak to her now, an immense weight that put pressure on the very air until it was a struggle to breathe. The sky around it was a gray as everything else in the half-world of her sleeping mind. It rumbled like a great tiger, seeking the taste of her blood._

_"Abhaya." The first call came, lurching out of the hot, suffocating air. The sky rumbled on overhead, dark as a bruise. "Abhaya, Abhaya, Abhaya."_

_The name struck her as foreign, even alien; it had been so long since she heard it. She was not sure that anyone living even knew it. It belonged to the army of wailing, begging wraiths that was coming for her, out of the shadows between trees and the clusters of devil grass that grew in the fields beyond. They wore the faces of the long dead, and shuffled toward her with halting, dragging steps, screaming her name as they reached out with cold, dead fingers. She took a single step and had to stop, the grass leaving deep, bleeding cuts across her knees. The red of her blood was the only colour left in the world._

_It was her parents, their soft featured, loving faces transformed before her eyes into masks of suffering. A bullet had entered her mother's cheek, tearing the flesh and scoring deep burns around the hole. It had shattered her teeth as well, so that when she opened her mouth and wailed the jagged pieces gnashed and sawed. Blood ran down over her torn lips and splashed the rags that still covered her mostly naked body. Someone had torn her sari almost entirely off, and bitten her breasts until they turned black and blue. Something had struck her father at the temple, caving in his forehead and forcing one of his warm brown eyes out of its socket. It hung down on his cheek, swinging on the end of withered pink string. Somehow, it seemed worse to see him looking so much more as he had in life when he stretched his hands out and called her name in that terrible voice, full of pain and death and suffering._

_"Abhaya." They wailed together, transforming the name they had given her with love into a dirge of pain and grief. "Abhaya, Abhaya, Abhaya."_

_Her brothers followed, crying thick rivers of dark blood in place of tears as they clustered around her. Every touch of their fingers scored deep gashes down her thin arms, across her chest and back until she was bleeding from a dozen fresh wounds. They sucked the blood from their fingers between moans and continued calling her name, mindlessly, as she cried and struggled to escape the cutting grass forgotten, everything forgotten beyond the need to be away from this hell among the quiet trees that had once been so beautiful and precious. She screamed at herself, this is a dream, but it made no difference. The ghosts remained and when she tried to speak they did not hear, only continued clawing, pulling and wailing her name in their sad, lost voices._

_"Abhaya, Abhaya, Abhaya."_

_The others were coming, as they always did, little boys and girls from her years on the streets in the Terminus System, their hard little faces coloured in bruises. Charlaine, Tyzon, Rek, Mathieu, humans and turians and little asari with elderly eyes, their mouths twisted into snarls as they spoke her name with anger instead of sadness. These were her victims, beaten black and blue and bloody for food, water, places to sleep and self defence. She had killed them, or just watched them die, and now they came to taste her blood, crawling out of the rotten depths of her darkest nightmare._

_There was Bines and Forlorn, Humphries, Godfrey, Louis and Garland with the chalky dust of Akuze still clinging to their boots and armour. They were so young, she could feel herself weeping at the sight of their strong bodies blasted into bloody shreds, their smooth, immaculate faces turning black and swelling up, tongues jutting, eyes turning black and blind as the blood vessels burst within them. Had she ever been young like them? She looked down at her cut, bleeding body as they joined the throngs pressing in around her and shook her head, wondering. It did not seem possible that she could have ever been as young and as full of stupid fire as they had been._

_And then Kaidan, his face surrounded by a halo of dark hair that burnt with a hard white flame and threw no heat. His dark eyes melted, turned to jelly and poured down his face in scalding streams as he lunged and wrapped his powerful arms around her in a crushing iron embrace. Burnt by the bomb on Virmire, his skin blackened and turned split, his lips curled back over his even white teeth as he held her close, muscle melting away, catching fire and burning to ash. What she would have given to have him hold her once, now his touch did nothing but fill her mind with fear and the stench of burning flesh. He clutched her tighter and howled her name, his voice so hard and full of pain it brought tears to her eyes, hot, sharp and stinging. He had only ever called her 'Shepard' in life, but now he joined the others in the dark chorus, "Abhaya, Abhaya, Abhaya."_

_The rest had no faces, and no names. Soldiers that died at her commands, or as a result of her actions at least, appearing as shapeless black masks on top of featureless Alliance armour. They chanted her name in soft, undulating voices, grasping at her while she broke down and began to scream. As they fell at her feet and drank the blood pouring down her skin from the ragged ribbons of her torn flesh, she screamed and screamed and screamed._

_Then came the legion, the thousand faces of those she had killed not through negligence, or savagery, or sacrifice but because she was a soldier and killing was what she was meant to do. Batarians, turians, asari, salarians and humans, pirates, mercenaries, smugglers, drug dealers, murderers, villains and fiends, they poured down the face of the mountain and between the trees in endless waves, all of them wailing and screaming her name. Kaidan's spectre was nothing but a skeleton now, black and dry, crumbling to dust as his grip just continued to grow tighter, until she could draw no more air and she started to choke._

_She looked up at the mountain again as her eyes started growing dim, and the slopes were covered with a sea of writhing bodies, each one moving unerringly toward her. She was the centre of this world of the dead, they fought each other in the height of their need to tear her to pieces and lick the blood from their gray, rotting fingers. Through it all she gasped, sobbing, barely fighting now, and accomplishing absolutely nothing. All around her the spectres cried her name, the sheer number of voices drowning out the rest of the world until there was nothing but the sound of her name, twisted by hate and made into an accusation._

_"ABHAYA, ABHAYA, ABHAYA."_

_She had no air left for screaming, or whimpering or even struggling. She was fighting not for freedom, but for another minute of life, a heartbeat, a moment. The darkness was coming, the true darkness, and she opened herself to it, willing it to pour into her, fill her up and carry her away. She wanted to die, she realized, anything was better than enduring another moment of this._

_The rain started to fall from the boiling gray sky and she looked down, watching all colour leak out of her skin, her hair darken and turn brittle, her blood go thick and stagnant as swamp water. She was dying. All she had to do was stop fighting and let the terrible darkness of her shadow world consume her. All she had to do was give up._

She woke sweating in her bed, with the glitter of the wards shining through her skylight like a sea of purple stars. There was a moment where she still could not breathe, her eyes stinging from the sheen of cold sweat, her entire body burning with the aftermath of the dream. It had been a nightmare. Only a nightmare, she had forgotten that at some point during her mindless terror among the ghosts of her past. Even in the warmth of her quarters her dreams lingered, a bitter chill in the depths of her muscles. Her lungs hurt. She could taste salt on her lips. Her face seemed to be wet.

"Shepard?" EDI's voice rang through the still air of her quarters as Shepard forced herself up with her right arm, cradling the left in her lap as the still healing shoulder ached sharply. The white orb of light that symbolized EDI flickered at its terminal, as if with concern. "Should I summon the doctor?"

"No." Shepard rasped, her throat raw. "No doctor. I was just... just dreaming."

"You were screaming." The AI informed her placidly.

"I said I was fine," Shepard snapped, pushing herself off the bed onto wobbly legs. She lifted her arm and rotated her shoulder, urging blood to the injured joint. The movement made her fingers tingle with pin and needle sensations as she made her way to the bathroom. "Tell Miranda I want to see her in," she squeezed her eyes closed and tried to think clearly, "half an hour."

EDI paused, her physical manifestation continuing to flicker slightly as processors fired somewhere two decks below.

"As you wish," she said finally, and the orb of white light vanished. Without her silvery lights and the fish tanks pitched dim for the evening cycle her quarters were lit almost entirely by the crimson light of the nebula overhead. She lifted her hands and watched the waves of light wash over them, until they were as red as they had been in her dreams. Shuddering, she made her way to the bathroom to wash the stink of terrified sweat off her golden brown skin.

The hot shower did surprisingly little to warm her blood, and she emerged from the stall shivering in clouds of steam. As she dried her hair with a coarse towel she poked her head out of the bathroom and glanced at the time displayed on her desk, sighing as she realized she had slept the entire day away. With no purpose to strive for, her mind drifted without direction and she spent her days going up and down through the wards, winding pointless circles or just staring listlessly at her computer wondering what to do next. In the end she always slept, for hours beyond what was necessary. Sighing again, she ducked back into the bathroom to brush her hair and scrub her face.

As she applied the few traces of makeup, liner and shadow around her eyes and a touch of blush on the apples of her cheeks, she examined her own reflection, turning her head slightly to the side to get herself in profile. The person across from her moved when she did, when she raised her toothbrush to her mouth the mirror woman did so as well, every movement a perfect mime of her own but she was still a stranger.

It was not just the absence of her crowfeet, or the lack of the gray hairs that had begun showing at each temple. It was not the way her breasts had been toned up, the natural sag and stretch pulled in until she was perky and fresh as she had been in her twenties. Even the scars, which were extensive, were manageable as long as she did not try to show too much skin. Those were the most obvious differences, but in the end they mattered the least. Everything was so different in this body; the only thing that looked familiar to her anymore was her nose, narrow and slightly off-centre, with a prominent boney hook from from countless breaks.

Her cheeks had been round and full throughout most of her life and were sunken and gaunt now, her features grown sharp with tension. Even though the wrinkles around her eyes had been smoothed away while she slept they seemed heavy with the abiding exhaustion that hung heavy as lead in every bone. Her long, curly dark hair had hung to her waist, but something in her long slumber had turned it brittle silver-white and now when it grew past a couple of inches it simply broke off when she brushed it. The light hair was not flattering, it leeched the colour from her skin and made her look all the more wane and sickly. She looked like a walking corpse, which was appropriate she supposed, and it was almost impossible to see any hint of the woman she had been in the haggard, suffering creature who stared back at her out of the mirror.

And then there were the scars.

Vicious things, webbed over her face and forehead, down her neck, across her shoulders, down her back to her waist and then down her legs to her ankles. Naked from her shower every angry inch of them was exposed and she stepped back to get a better look at them. Terrible gashes as thick as her pinky travelled from navel to shoulder blade, intersecting and dividing at random, twisting into knots of pink seams split open over glowing cybernetic muscle implants. Her upper arms were wreathed in lines so jagged they resembled tribal tattoos. Her hips were criss-crossed with thin, exact surgical scars, as was her spinal column and every joint. They fanned out in a pretty pattern across the tops of her feet and the backs of her hands. There was a scar as thick as her wrist that went from the back of her knee all the way up to the small of her back. Every line glowed brilliant, unearthly orange and she sighed as she left the bathroom to avoid looking at the only thing that made her feel more alien than her glowing scars.

Once wide and bright, the colour of liquid chocolate flecked with gold, her eyes had been the lovely centrepiece of her sweet, round face. But that was before. Before the pressure of suffocation had burst the delicate blood vessels and cold had frozen them in her sockets.

Miranda had hand-designed mechanical replacements, lenses and lights installed inside globes of cloned collagen and elastic fibre. In normal light they could almost pass as entirely human if a little too bright and a little too sharp. In dim light they transformed, tiny lights flared to life, lenses pivoted on hinges thin as a human hair, until they reflected every hint of light available. They made her night vision as crisp and clear as any cat's. It also made them look blank, lifeless, disks of pure orange fire, demonic, like nothing human. When they focused on something she could feel the lenses grind and shift, not a painful sensation but when they adjusted themselves to her brightly lit quarters the feeling was enough to send a cold shiver down her spine.

Resolving to ignore her discomfort with her appearance, she was a soldier after all and soldiers did not fuss over scars and wrinkles, she fished out a pair of plain gray military underwear and one of her usual shapeless jumpsuits. She was just getting herself zipped in when her cabin door slid open behind her followed by the clipped ring of high heels on steel. Shepard turned, opening her mouth to speak and was immediately struck dumb by the dark haired femme fatale, who was still putting in one of her silver earrings.

Miranda was wearing a dark violet dress made out of some sort of rippling silk, accented at the waist with curls of silver thread embroidery. It was cut just above her knees and hugged her hips and thighs provocatively. The daring v-neck was held at the base by a silver broach in the shape of a lion's head with flecks of glittering amethyst for eyes. The same purple stones decorated her at throat, wrist and finger. All in all she was ravishing, dressed to kill, and staring at Shepard's jumpsuit with tight-lipped scepticism.

"Tell me you aren't planning on wearing that out tonight." She said, one eyebrow cocked in disbelief. Shepard glanced down at the uniform, looking for a stray mustard stain or fraying hem and finding nothing amiss. It was the same thing she wore every day, black cotton with elastic at the waist to give it a vaguely human shape and snug straps holding it closed at wrist and ankle. Thick pads of carbonized rubber swaddled vulnerable joints and she had her heavy combat boots out, the only things that really fit comfortably on her feet any longer. At the moment she was the exact opposite of ravishing.

"What's happening tonight?" She asked, a frown drawing her eyebrows down over her fierce beak of a nose. She found that any information not directly to related the Reapers and their imminent arrival slipped out of her mind at a shameful rate, in one ear and out the other. She shuffled papers and data pads around on her desk, hunting for the pad that contained her day-to-day schedule. It was hopeless struggle, one she quickly abandoned. Geniuses might work in organized chaos, but Shepard's desk was just a terrible mess. "Did you make me another appointment?"

Miranda made a frustrated sound at the back of her throat and put her hands on her hips. When she pursed her lips and her dark blue eyes burned with angry fire Shepard could have sworn that the other woman was the one in charge. She resisted the urge to strike a salute and instead focused on looking bashful and a little bit ashamed, all the better to spur Miranda past the disapproving stage to the point where she would actually reveal what was going on.

"It's the party tonight, Shepard." Every word was laced with exasperation. "You promised me you wouldn't forget. You swore."

"I didn't forget," Shepard insisted, shambling down to her living area and collapsing onto her couch and crossing her ankle over her knee. She wanted to slap herself for forgetting. "I mean, not right away. I got the room and the bar set up, made sure there would be lots of privacy, security, I even went and looked at the decorations. Everything is all set up, I just forgot when it stopped being important. Go get drunk and have fun, we'll talk when you've slept off your hangover."

Miranda did not move a muscle. It was a terrible omen.

"No," she said, steel in her voice. Shepard knew the other woman well enough to recognize when she had made a decision. She felt her stomach clench in terrible anticipation, she already knew what was coming. "You are going to that party Shepard, if I have to drag you there by your hair. And you will drink and dance and stumble around, if you have to do it all with a gun to your head."

"I don't have anything to wear." She tried, shifting uncomfortably. There was no reasoning with Miranda when she got that look, and Shepard had always been glad not to have that look directed at her. Shepard squirmed under the heat of the other woman's glare, and shot to her feet as Miranda took a step toward her.

"You can borrow something of mine." The dark haired woman countered, as they circled each other around the narrow coffee table.

"The day I fit my ass in your pants is the day I teach Grunt to dance ballet." Shepard snorted, very amused at the idea she could wedge herself in to any of Miranda's skin-tight getups.

"I know just the thing for you; it'll bring out the colour of your hair and fit your ass just fine. Trust me." There was an angry snap to the other woman's step now, dark energy licking up the curves of her smooth white legs and the folds of her silken dress. "Now stop stalling or we're going to be late."

"I'm no good at parties." She tried another tactic as Miranda attempted to dart around the corner of the table and grab her arm. She scrambled away, up the shallow set of stairs that connected her living area with her office. Miranda was wearing a pair of dangerously high heels, the strappy, sexy kind often referred to as 'fuck me pumps', but they did not seem to be doing much to slow her down. She chased Shepard up the stairs as the commander considered making a run for the elevator. "I never know what to say, and I made every awkward situation a hundred times more awkward. I'll just kill everyone's buzz."

"You're a hero Shepard. You could slur, spill your drink and splatter puke down everyone's front and they would probably thank you for the honour of your company." Her eyes blazed as she cut off the escape route to the door, cornering Shepard between her bathroom and her crowded desk. "Except Jack, and Zaeed, and probably Grunt." She paused for a moment, her lips turning white they were pressed together so hard. "You're still going."

"But Miranda-" She began, her voice creeping to a range that was suspiciously akin to whining.

"No buts!" Miranda insisted, slicing the air with one hand as the other seized her by the arm and gave her a little push toward the door. "If you want to keep these people loyal without offering them competitive wages or job security you better be ready to make inspiring appearances and get close to them. At times like this they need to believe that you really know them, and that you really care."

"I do care." Shepard insisted as she was ushered into the elevator. "But how is getting drunk and making a fool of myself going to convince people I'm a great leader, worthy of following? I've had plenty of excellent CO's who never puked on me."

"Everyone drinks too much and makes a fool of themselves sometimes," Miranda sniffed as she punched the button for the Crew Deck. She was on high alert, lest the commander attempt to escape to the engineering deck. She need not have worried; Shepard had more or less accepted her fate at this point. "And everyone knows you're a great leader. Now you need to prove how much of a human being you are."

The cheery ding of the elevator arriving at its intended floor did nothing to lighten the sudden sombre mood that had descended upon her. She could admit, at a grudgingly reasonable level, that what Miranda was saying made sense. She gave the other woman a searching look, trying to decode the fierce set of her shoulders and the dark spark smouldering in her eyes. If someone had told her a month ago that Miranda would be arguing to keep her in command of a warship they had stolen from Cerberus she would have died laughing.

"Take that thing off." Miranda ordered, when the doors to her office had slid closed behind them. She went to her drawers and pulled a couple of them open, rummaging through bright slips of silk and cotton.

"Oh Miranda, I always thought our first time would be more tender than that." Shepard chided as she grabbed the zipper of her jumpsuit and tugged it down to her waist. Miranda took one look at the gray cotton underwear she was wearing and dug to the bottom of her drawer, tossing her a set of black lingerie with the tags still attached.

"Shut up. Put those on while I find a shirt for you." She ordered, and Shepard obeyed with military instinct, stripping naked and pulling on the frilly underwear. The bra was a nightmare of wire and lace; it pushed her breasts up and together, giving her a long, gratuitous line of golden cleavage. She glanced the full length mirror hanging on the wall and had to give the other woman credit. The bra pinched and scraped her skin something fierce, but it made her look pretty alright, even with the scars.

Miranda threw a pair of black pants at her next, and Shepard kicked her feet into them without being told. She discovered they were leather and they laced up the front with a tangle of silver cord rather than the infinitely simpler fly. She had to exhale until her stomach and lungs ached sharply so she could get them done up properly. The shirt Miranda chose for her was silver as well, with thick straps that covered most of the scarring across her shoulders. It also did not have any sleeves, so the thick scars on her upper arms glittered, a splash of ruddy orange against her monotone elegance. Miranda had a solution for that too, a light, fluttering cashmere sweater that wrapped around her waist and tied at the hip. Next was a pair of leather pumps, half a size too small for her feet but mercifully lower than Miranda's own towering heels. A thin silver chain was looped around her neck, and a thick bracelet found its way onto her wrist, engraved with flowers, each petal a flake of polished jet.

Miranda paused, laying one finger against her chin and she looked her commanding officer up and down with a critical eye. Finally, she nodded with approval. "You clean up alright, Shepard." She commented, taking her at the elbow and pulling her back toward the elevator. She paused for only a moment, to spritz them both with a vanilla and jasmine perfume from a fancy crystal bottle on her night stand.

"I guess I should technically say thank you." Shepard said, as the elevator inched its way up to the Command Deck.

Miranda checked her makeup in a compact mirror, dabbing a little extra blush on the apples of her cheeks. The sideways look she shot her commander was lean and decidedly unhappy. She turned back to the mirror, wiping a stray smear of mascara away. "You could say thank you," she said after a moment, "if you felt like it. I would be happy to let you cloister yourself in that room and forget all about us, but no one is going to follow me across the galaxy with nothing but a noble cause and handful of promises as payment."

Shepard felt her eyes soften, as much as chips of glass and metal wire could soften, as guilt sunk its cold claws into her stomach and gave a harsh pull. She had been acting irresponsibly, shutting herself up and sleeping the hours away when she should have been putting in face time or lending a hand to the rebuilding of the Normandy. She shifted uncomfortably and rubbed the back of her neck as the borrowed shoes pinched her toes mercilessly.

"Sorry," Shepard said after a moment, "I know I haven't been at my best. It's just… it's just…" Her words seemed to stick in her throat, growing heavy and awkward as she tried to articulate the frustration and exhaustion that she had been attempting to cope with the past three and a half weeks, while the Normandy was hammered and screwed back together all around her.

The doors slid open as they arrived on the Command Deck, cutting her explanation short as a wave of noise broke over them. A small crowd had gathered around the galaxy map, everyone dressed to the nines and ready for a night on the town. Every station was empty as everyone aboard had been excused for the wildly anticipated victory celebration. Half the crew milled about outside the elevator, and every one of them turned to look at Shepard as she stepped out of the elevator feeling naked and cold. Whistles and appreciative shouts came from the swarm of happy faces assembled around them and she felt a tiny bit of her apprehension relax.

"Damn Shepard." Jacob appeared suddenly at her elbow as she headed for the airlock. He was wearing stylish gray pants and brightly coloured dress shirt without a tie, the first three buttons left open to reveal the first slopes of his perfectly muscled chest. "I wasn't even counting on you to show."

"Miranda reminded me that I have responsibilities." She put on a smile, which required only a little bit of effort and shrugged in a way that she hoped would come off as carefree. "And tonight I chose to believe that those responsibilities lie hidden at the bottom of a bottle of bourbon."

Jacob laughed as they reached the rapid transit terminal and piled into the waiting vehicle. Miranda's tight skirt and heels combo making her exit from the cab twenty minutes later so undignified that Shepard had to dart into the club ahead of them, muffling her laughter into her hand. Jacob stayed to give her a supportive hand, his poker face much more solid than hers. As she made her way to the back, offering her thumb to the guard with the print scanner who stood outside the VIP room she caught snatches of raucous laughter escaping from behind the heavy wooden door. The guard waved her through and someone pulled the door open for her from the other side, releasing a blast of body heat and conversation. The room was already full of crew members taking advantage of the opportunity to get stinking drunk on top-shelf liquor for free.

"Shepard!" Her name cut the confusing jumble of noise, making her jump and almost stumble in her unfamiliar heels. She turned just far enough to catch sight of Grunt before he made contact, his arms curling around her like bands of steel, crushing her flat against his chest. Her feet kicked ineffectually around his knees as she gasped for breath. "They said you weren't coming, that you were too busy working, but I knew you would."

"Oh." Shepard managed, knowing she should be flattered by the krogan's unwavering faith in her, but unable to think beyond a sudden, desperate need for oxygen. Grunt was crushing her harder against his chest by the second, her lungs flattening as she squeaked for breath.

"A good battlemaster always shares victory with their soldiers." The alcohol clinging to his breath was potent as a slap to the face, and she could feel the neck of a bottle digging into the small of her back as he tightened his hold on her. "They didn't believe me, but here you are."

"Grunt, it's not that I don't appreciate the sentiment," she squeaked, "but I… can't breathe."

"What? Oh." He dumped her back on her feet, letting go so suddenly that she almost went down on her knees right there. As she teetered, trying to regain her stability he laughed and slapped one huge hand against her shoulder, sending her crashing to the floor. The sight of her gasping for air at his feet just made him laugh harder. "Are you drunk already Shepard? I bet you are! Somebody get Shepard a glass of ryncol, she needs to keep her buzz going!"

She pushed herself up to her hands and knees as the bar tender gave the young krogan dubious looks. She was busy trying to get a handle on her mounting fury when a scaly green hand appeared in the air before her, shimmering in the dim light. She looked up into a pair of black eyes and a fine-boned face twisted into an expression of pure bemusement.

Thane helped her to his feet, something she found she needed while her feet were encased uselessly in the leather pumps Miranda had foisted on her. Her brief flirtation with the idea that dressing up and going out could be fun was thoroughly over. She wanted a shotgun and a knife, so she could shoot Grunt in the face and take his head plates as a trophy. The krogan was busy gulping from his bottle of ryncol, but when he finished he held it out to her expectantly.

"Perhaps Zaeed would care to join you for a drink?" Thane offered quietly as she dusted herself off. Getting her guts torn up by alien liquor was not high on her to-do list. He indicated the private table where the weathered mercenary was talking to Jack, completely oblivious to the altercation taking place at the door. Grunt burped in response, and lumbered off on unsteady feet.

"Thanks," she said, keeping her voice pitched low as crew members streamed through the door behind them. Thane drew her out of the flow of foot traffic, toward the massive semi-circular bar and its massive backlit shelves packed full of liquor. Jacob had beaten them to it, and he glided past them with a tray full of shots, heading for where Miranda was talking to a crew member in a pretty red dress. "I never know how to handle drunk people."

"It is a subtle art," Thane said solemnly, "generally I find it best to pretend they really are stupid as the alcohol makes them seem." He watched her adjust her borrowed clothing, attempting to pick hair and dust off the sleeves of her sweater. "Are you well?"

"Well enough," she assured him, "krogan affection hits like a sack of hammers."

They moved slowly across the empty dance floor as she rubbed at her aching ribs. The crew was not quite drunk enough to get the dancing started. They stood in small conversational groups, or sat in the comfortable leather booths nailed to the surrounding walls. There was a moment of silence, as they reached the bar and Shepard climbed awkwardly onto one of the high stools, her heels making even that unaccountably difficult. Thane extended a hand to help her, but she waved it away after a moment. Wearing high heels might make her a lady, but damned if she was going to act like one.

"What can I get you two?" The turian working the bar asked, his mandible vibrating in a friendly manner as they made themselves comfortable. Shepard crossed her legs as she thought, readjusting the folds of her sweater as she glanced at the hundreds of bottles lined up behind him. She did not recognize a single one.

"Bourbon," she said after a moment, "two fingers, straight up." When in doubt, she went with the tried and true. She had been drinking bourbon since she was sixteen.

"Quoaky." Thane placed his own order as the bar tender pulled a glass tumbler from below the bar and set it in front of her on a folded napkin. "Poured over mattat leaves and crushed ice."

Shepard turned the napkin over in her hand. It was blood red; it matched the table clothes and the huge alien flowers being used as centre pieces. She glanced around at the red and black streamers hanging from the ceiling, the red lights spinning across the dance floor, the red shimmer of the granite bar top under her hand. The TRIUMPH package certainly had a solid colour scheme going. She watched as the turian poured a generous two fingers of clear, amber liquor into her glass from a bottle labelled with nothing but four stylized roses and a very good year. She inhaled the smell of oak and strong drink as the tender produced another tumbler, packing the bottom of it with bright violet leaves.

"Is that a drell alcohol?" She asked with interest, as the tender ground a mortar around the glass three times and piled crushed ice on top. She reached for a bowl of snacks before she realized they were labelled 'dextro'. Thane nudged a safe bowl toward her with one elbow as the tender poured a stream of tropical blue liquid into the glass. The smell was warm and intoxicating, heavy with alien scents that she had no names for.

"Asari." He answered. "But drell like to drink it with mattat, a spice we brought with us from Rakhana." The deep purple juices of the mattat swirled at the bottom of his glass as he lifted it off the bar, mingling prettily with the brilliant, shimmering blue of the quoaky.

"It looks good," she commented, "but let me guess, it'll rape my liver and cut up my stomach if I try it?" Alien liquor had this terrible habit of killing humans who drank it.

"Not at all," Thane assured her holding out the glass, "it's quite palatable to humans, actually. You can try some if you like." The quoaky was served cold and she could see beads of perspiration already running down the sides of the tumbler. Her mouth watered and she shrugged, nudging her own glass in his direction as she accepted his. They both drank.

"Oh my." Shepard breathed, and took another long sip. The juice and alcohol were almost fully mixed now, turning the drink a dusky shade of violet. The choking sweetness of the quoaky was tempered by the sharp spice of the mattat juice. As she lowered the glass again her lips and nose began to tingle, as though she had just bitten into a fresh ginger root. She savoured the rich, deep aroma of the cocktail before she passed it back to its original owner. "It's delicious."

"I wish I could say the same about your bourbon." He replied pleasantly. "It tastes like old wood and burnt toast to me."

"Oh, it's like that for everyone. Bourbon is an acquired taste," she assured him as she drained what was left in the bottom of the glass. She grinned at the puzzled expression on his face, the glass frozen half way to his lips as he pondered that statement.

"I see." He said, in the 'humans are crazy' tone she heard so much. She laughed openly, feeling the spreading warmth of the alcohol loosening some of the knots social anxiety had tied in her stomach. She signalled to the tender with her empty glass and he whisked it away under the bar with one hand, while the other found a clean replacement.

"Another?" He asked smoothly. Shepard considered for a moment and shook her head.

"Nah, gimme one of those co-aki things." She said as Thane downed what was left in his glass and nodded when the tender asked if he would like a refill. When he moved to stow the bottle back on the shelf Shepard waved him off. It was not too large, and if she was going to be a dutiful soldier and follow Miranda's 'get drunk and puke on everyone' plan she needed to get some serious drinking done.

"I meant to thank you." He said, after the bar tender had moved away, leaving them with a little glass jar of extra leaves as well as the tall, slim bottle of asari alcohol. She raised a questioning eyebrow at him and he nodded to her tender shoulder. "How is your arm?"

"What are you talking about the dislocation?" She asked, rotating her shoulder in broad circles to demonstrate how well-healed it was. It only stung a little bit, and she was pretty sure she managed to hide that from Thane. "Good as new. A dislocation is nothing; if you'd torn my rotator cuff, now then you'd owe me some thank you's."

Thinking back on the lair of the human reaper still had the power to make Shepard sick to her stomach. Her memories of the collector ship were dark, chaotic things full of the ozone and burnt-flesh stink of the colossal monstrosity. She barely remembered fighting it, though Miranda assured her she had run out of clips and thrown her pistol at the damn thing. She did remember Thane, slipping backwards over the platform as it slowly ground sideways over the great pit where the reaper burned with an oily red flame. She did not remember throwing herself after him, only the slither of polished steel under her belly, the outline of his hand stretching out to her, five feet away, then two, then one, and then the touch of his fingers before she lost her grip and he went sliding away again, over the edge. She did not remember reaching over the edge for him, but she remembered the pain, stabbing up her arm, exploding into her shoulder as the jerk of his weight wrenched the joint from its socket. Her fingers around his had not even twitched; they were a ring of steel until she pulled him to the (relative) safety of the stabilizing platform.

She realized he was shaking his head as he pulled something from the pocket of his jacket, holding it out to her. It was an envelope, she realized after a moment, made from thick, cream-coloured paper. She felt it experimentally, and found something about the size of a pea at one corner.

"I don't know human customs very well," he admitted, "but among the drell it is customary to exchange gifts when one wishes to thank another. Thank you, Shepard. For saving my life and for what you did for Kolyat."

"Oh. That's very generous of you, Thane." She looked down at the envelope in her hand, suddenly uneasy. She would have hated the idea of a human team mate spending any money on her, but she did not want to offend him so she tore the end of the envelope open with one finger. "If I was being polite by the standards of human culture I would tell you that this wasn't necessary. But… thank you."

She tilted the envelope to the side and a thin metal chain slithered out into her waiting hand. She held it up, letting it catch the light and sparkle in her hands. The metal gleamed with a curious green tint, and there was a charm, a little round gemstone that shone brilliant, fiery orange. It was the same shade as her eyes, she realized, and her scars.

"It's beautiful." She said, as she turned the tiny stone over in her palm and watched the light dance over its surface. It looked like a piece of a star, like it should be hot to the touch instead of as pleasantly cool as it was.

"The chain is green silver from Rakhana." Thane told her, watching as she pulled it over her head. "The gem is called an 'Eye of Arashu' one of my people's precious stones. The drell no longer visit our planet, save for religious pilgrimage, but there are those who have mined what beauty it has left to offer." He nodded his approval as she tucked the tiny orange stone into her shirt. The chain was so long that it hung down between her breasts. "The Eye should rest beside your heart," he explained, "so that you will always be granted the clear sight of the goddess of the just."

"I don't know what to say." She confessed, suddenly uncomfortable. She could not recall ever having received something that was half as beautiful. Even Cerberus' 'gift' of a second chance at life had come with a wealth of bitter consequences and strings attached. The stone glimmering between the curves of her breasts was untainted by any such unhappiness, it was just a drop of beauty in a galaxy that kept getting uglier every day.

"Then say nothing." Thane replied. "Nothing is needed. It is a small token compared to all you have given me."

He raised his glass to her and she smiled, lifting her own in response. They both drank, draining the tumblers down the dregs. The mattat was so strong it made her eyes water, but she refilled both their glasses from the bottle on the table and they drank again, talking about small, unimportant things. He was enjoying 'Death in the Afternoon', the book she had lent him last week and she was almost finished the 'The Two Horizons', the poetry collection he had lent her in return. They drank more, and Shepard found herself laughing openly as her head began to swim, her vision clouding. Even Thane was less stoic than usual, smiling broadly and leaning against the bar on his elbows as she told him about the time she had totally right-hooked that smug reporter.

"Shepard!" She almost did not hear her name, it was pick anything out of the steadily mounting wall of noise the crew was producing as they grew steadily more drunk. It was hard to miss the sudden appearance of a thickly muscled arm around her neck, pulling her firmly against Jacob's side. He was feeling merry, already much merrier than her, and almost dragged her off the stool as he grinned at her. "I've been looking for you."

"Not very hard, I guess." Shepard commented as she reached for her half-finished drink. The bottle of quoaky was half gone, and she could not remember if this was her fourth or fifth glass. A bad sign. "I've been sitting right here all night."

"Well, come have a drink with us." The lieutenant insisted as he threw his arm out in a sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire club. "Krios can't keep you to himself all night."

"As much as I might wish it were otherwise, Mr. Taylor is correct." Thane admitted. He extended one hand as she attempted to get off the stool, which seemed to have become two miles high. After a moment of hesitation she took it, and let him help her to the ground. Her head was actively swimming now, her vision wavering a little bit and she grabbed hold of Jacob's arm to steady herself.

"Thanks again, Thane. Enjoy your night." She gestured for him to have free reign of the bottle of quoaky and he smiled at her in response, draining what was left in his glass. She thought she could feel his eyes on her as she stumbled away, arm in arm with Jacob, but when she glanced back over her shoulder he was just pouring himself another drink.

The booth Jacob had claimed for himself was piled high with empty shot glasses, tumblers and a couple delicate wine carafes, all of them bone dry. Kelly was reclining with her head cushioned on Kenneth's lap, her brown silk dress hiked up far enough to expose most of her freckled thighs. Gabriella was fussing over her constant companions' hair, pushing the lazy red curls out of his eyes.

"Look what I found." Jacob said, though Shepard could not be sure if he meant her or the bottle of tequila that he popped down in the centre of the table. The forest of salt shakers and lime peels scattered across the table said that they had downed at least one bottle already.

"Shepard," Kelly cried, extending two slender white hands in her direction. "I fell down, but neither of these assholes will help me up. You'll help me, won't you?"

Shepard laughed, happy to collapse back into a steady seat. She grasped the drunken woman's hands and hauled her upright, where she teetered for a moment before slumping back against her commander. She laughed breathlessly and clawed at a few shot glasses, trying to get them lined up properly in front of them. "I knew I could count on you," she confided happily, "you're my hero."

"Yeah, yeah Kelly." Gabriella cut in, licking the back of her hand and salting it liberally. She passed the salt shaker to Kenneth, who seemed to be having a difficult time dragging his eyes away from the long tracks of milky white skin still being exposed by Kelly's skirt. "Less kiss-assing, more shot pouring."

"You wish you could kiss this ass Gabby." Shepard shot back, not even thinking about how wildly inappropriate that was. Quoaky inspired a light headed, euphoric drunk that was more like the high one got from really good marijuana or salarian gorba berries. She was still mostly lucid, but she felt incredibly mellow and friendly. Her companions laughed, which was a good sign.

"A few more shots and that might be true," Gabriella replied glibly, "but I won't know for sure until Kelly pours the damn things."

Kelly managed to pour the shots, only spilling a little bit, as Jacob passed her a salt shaker. She hesitated, a few vague memories of tequila-soaked nights in command school surfacing. She sighed and shrugged after a moment, salting her hand anyway. This was supposed to be a night of liberation and freedom from usual restrictions.

_I'm going to regret this. _She thought, before she licked the salt off her hand and lifted the shot glass to her lips. She had to grit her teeth against the fierce sting of the tequila, sucking hard on the lime wedge Kelly passed her. The taste of it was completely overpowering, and the alcohol went straight to her head with the force of a bag full of bricks.

"Oh Jesus," she swore quietly, muffling her quiet coughing into her hand. "I forgot how much tequila fucks me up."

"It's supposed to," Jacob laughed and threw his ravaged peel at her. She tried to slap it out of the air and missed completely; it struck her in the forehead and tumbled down between her breasts. He rocked with laughter as he leant forward and refilled the glass in front of her. "Take another."

"God have mercy," she tried to wave him away, "I can't."

Jacob grinned and downed it himself with no problem, to hoots of laughter and support from their drinking partners. He was still grinning as a few tears pushed their way past his thick lashes and trickled down his cheeks. He laughed and reached for another lime wedge. "Finally, something that someone can do better than Shepard."

"Oh, whatever Taylor," she scoffed. If she had been a bit more sober she probably would have recognized the transparency of his clumsy reverse-psychology or caught the glint in his eye that bespoke mischief. She had been able to drink men twice her size under the table in command school and keep going with no problem, swigging cheap tequila straight out of the bottle with no lime or salt in sight. "You wish you could keep pace with me."

"That's a lot of talk for someone who could barely stomach a single shot." He replied, raising one eyebrow at her. "You've gotten all soft, Shepard."

"Shut your mouth and pour me a shot," she replied, "in fact, pour me two." He decision was met with a roar of approval as she shook a generous amount of salt over the back of her hand. She accepted the two shots and downed them back to back, grimacing at the taste, before she reached for another slice of lime. Her head swam, and kept right on swimming as Jacob pulled her through another five rounds.

She managed to escape with the flimsy pretence of needing to use the bathroom while Jacob went for more tequila. The world was lurching underfoot and she did her best not to stumble as she picked her way past tables packed with crew members engaged in a whole spectrum of drinking games, some of which she had never even seen before. A few people had made their way on to the dance floor, most of them still clutching drinks in one hand. She made sure to avoid them, since being coerced into dancing was the last thing in the world she wanted. She caught a whisper of familiar laughter and turned, realizing that she had been standing unsteadily just a foot and a half away from the booth that Garrus and Tali were sharing along with the bottle of foamy dextro alcohol.

"Shepard," Tali greeted her, the mechanized purr of her voice decidedly sober and cautious, "you're..."

"Shitfaced." Shepard supplied helpfully. "Totally fucking shitfaced." She collapsed into the booth beside Garrus, careful to avoid toppling into his lap like Kelly and Donnely. She had a feeling that if she went down now she would have just as much trouble sitting up again.

"Impressively so," Garrus confirmed, laughing. The metal casing on the right side of his face shimmered in the reddish light and she leaned heavily against the table. All attempts to make the world stop turning slowly around her, to organize her scattered thoughts into workable concepts, to force herself to act in a more dignified and sober fashion completely failed. In the end, she just smiled at the two of them.

"I love you guys." She confessed, pulling her legs up against her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "I don't want to talk about anything serious. I just want to be with you."

They talked about vids, teasing Garrus mercilessly for his love of Vaenia, the new salarian councillor and his worship of the turian jerk, Samara's armour and made wild estimates regarding the dollar amount of the alcohol that everyone was knocking back. Shepard was willing to bet she had scored a major deal on the open bar setup. By the time they had begun to run out of entertaining conversation topics and Shepard pushed herself up to a standing position she was measurably more sober. At this point she was less 'shitfaced' and more 'hammered' or even 'plastered'. She tipped an imaginary hat at her two companions, who were just reaching the bottom of their bottle.

"Take advantage of the bar, you two." She ordered, drawing her face up into a scowl that made both of them laugh. "I paid for it, so you better be slobbering drunk next time I see you or you'll both be pulling sanitation duties until I stop being offended."

"A terrifying threat," Tali replied. It was impossible to garner the slightest hint of emotion from her, her luminous white eyes shining bright as ever behind the opaque glass of her helmet. There seemed to be the slightest hitch to her voice, the first traces of drunkenness, but it was almost impossible to tell.

"I do hate sanitation." Garrus confirmed, slamming back what was left in his glass. The turian was just as impartial as the quarian at the moment, but Shepard was willing to bet that was just because he was not actually drunk at all. At least not yet. "I guess we'd better be faithful and obedient soldiers."

"That's what I like to hear," Shepard slurred, "I'm going to see to it someone gives you a medal Vakarian." She punched him lightly on his armoured forearm and took her leave, tossing a salute over her shoulder at them as Garrus leaned forward to refill Tali's glass. He said something the commander could not hear and the high, tinkling notes of quarian laughter followed her around the dance floor to the next occupied booth. Zaeed looked up as she approached, taking in the wobbling steps and uncharacteristic slouch without expression. Jack grinned, scooting over a few inches to make room for her.

"What are you drinking?" She asked, as she took the seat, feeling her toe strike something huge and sedentary underneath the table. When she lifted the cloth she found Grunt passed out, snoring quietly, with his bottle of ryncol still clutched in one massive hand.

"Baxurz." Jack replied, giving her glass a nudge in Shepard's direction. She exchanged a devilish look with Zaeed, her usually hard, angry face flushed, her eyes glittering. "It's batarian. Try it."

She regretted it the moment she did, but Jack and Zaeed were clearly anticipating that so she forced herself to down it. It was ten times as bitter as anything she had ever tasted before, thick as oil and it burned with a painful intensity. She drained the glass and set it calmly back down in front of Jack, forcing her roiling stomach to remain in where it was. At the moment it felt like it was trying to climb back up her throat. Zaeed and Jack waited for a moment, clearly expecting a sudden spray of vomit. When it did not appear Jack laughed and slumped back in her seat with her hands folded over her stomach.

"Not bad." Shepard rasped, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"It tastes like garbage water," Jack replied, "but it gets the job done. I don't think I've seen anyone down baxurz like that. At least, no one who lived through the night."

"It's a little like ryncol," Zaeed chimed in, his broad face splitting into a grin. "Too much'll cut your stomach up at the same time as it kills your brain. I was drinking baxurz on Omega once-"

"Shut the fuck up old man," Jack cut in, "no one wants to hear you ramble." They glared at each other for a moment and Sober Shepard hoped she was not going to have to play referee for her crew members again. Drunken Shepard was actually kind of interested in who would win if the two of them went head to head. The two of them continued to glare at each other, their lips twitching as they resisted the urge to smile.

_Well, fuck, _DrunkenShepard thought glumly. _I should probably go puke this up or something. But fuck them, I won't give them the satisfaction of being right. If I puke blood and die, that'll show these bastards._

Sober Shepard, hidden deep underneath the tequila and baxurz, thought that there was something faulty with that reasoning, but nobody was listening to her at the moment. She leaned back in the booth, tearing her eyes away from the ceiling. She was beginning to see double, two mouths grinning at her out of Jacks face, four pairs of eyes studying her as she attempted to force her eyes to work properly.

"I feel fine." She lied.

"You won't for long, daft bitch." Zaeed assured her. She chose to ignore that, and turned to Jack instead.

"I didn't think you'd be here," she said trying to sound completely sober. She was not sure how well she succeeded, but the other woman did not start laughing immediately so she figured she was in the clear. "I just mean... you laughed at me when I asked you if you wanted to come."

"Well you didn't mention the whole 'open bar' part of it when you asked me." Jack shot back. She gave the commander a rough shove on the shoulder that sent her reeling. The tattooed woman rocked with laughter, raising her glass to her lips and taking a tiny sip of the clear hard alcohol. "Free booze would get me to the cheerleaders wedding shower. And to her funeral three days later."

Shepard disguised her chuckled with the back of her hand, while Zaeed laughed outright. Sober Shepard was extremely disappointed in her, and reminded her that eventually she would need to deal with the Jack/Miranda thing before there were any impromptu beheadings in the mess hall. Those were thoughts six hundred times more complex than what she was capable of at the moment. She eyed the bottle suspiciously as Zaeed offered her another drink.

"I don't think that's a good idea." She said finally, waving his hand away. "I'm mixing liquor like a motherfucker all ready."

"I saw," Jack commented. She sounded like she was impressed, which made Drunken Shepard very proud. If her iron liver could impress Jack then she must be doing something right. Or wrong. Or... whatever. "I never guess you could be so liberated."

"Speaking of liberated-" Zaeed began.

"I told you to shut the fuck up." Jack cut him off again, grinning wildly across the table at him. They glared at each other for a long moment and Shepard shifted uncomfortably. It was not that she did not like Jack, she did, and even Zaeed had his own sort of abrasive charm but the two of them together were charging the air with sinister energy. Being plastered was not helping either. She looked between the two of them as their eye contact lengthened and their glares melted down into dangerous smiles.

"I'm ah... going to go over... there." She said, pointing in a vague direction. Now that she had finally clued in to it the sexual tension between them was thick enough to cut with a knife. She sidled out of the booth and remembered why one of the cardinal rules of alcohol was to drink standing up. She nearly fell over sideways as the world pitched and shifted under her heels. She steadied herself with one hand on the table top as the two of them smirked at her.

Jack gave her a look that said 'finally' and lifted a hand in the same general direction. "Have fun with that." She said, her eyes smouldering as she turned back to Zaeed. The two of them were circling each other like lions, neither wanting to strike first but both of them desperate to make the kill.

"Yeah. Well. I just wanted to say... thanks for almost dying, it was a big help." Shepard said, before scampering away, carefully skirting the dance floor and avoiding any eye contact with those engaged on it. She saw Miranda and Jacob together, both holding glasses of something she could not identify. It appeared that Miranda had graduated from wine to something harder, and her dancing gave credence to the notion.

Shepard bit her lip and glanced at the door, wondering if she could make her escape while the jailor was occupied. She had made an appearance, she had gotten exactly as drunk as recommended and she was hoping that she could avoid the whole dancing thing.

"Shepard."

She gave a little screech and jumped as Thane melted out of the shadows of the booth she had been leaning on. He caught her by the elbow as she teetered dangerously in her ungainly shoes. She ended up leaning against him, laughing breathlessly. The world was spinning in slow circles around her head, her limbs felt loose and watery as they curled around him for support.

"You're very cool." She said, running her hand up his arm.

His grass-green skin was rough when she ran her hand up his arm and smooth, almost silky, when she ran it back down. His shirt was pushed up to his elbows and she could see where the black scales that ran along his forearms splintered into jagged stripes and disappeared under the light cloth. All of him, the skin against her hand, the solid bulk of covered muscle pressed against her, was pleasantly cool to the touch. He smelled good, a mixture of spices too exotic to recognize, and being so close made her nose tingle when she inhaled.

She really knew she was drunk now, if there had ever been a question of it. Touchy-feely was not a term anyone used to describe her, yet here she was running her hand up and down Thane's arm, leaning close against him, thinking about how good he smelled.

Luckily, Thane seemed to have finished off the bottle of quoaky for her and did not mind her overly familiar ministrations. On the contrary, he raised one hand and brushed her cheek with the pads of his fingers.

"And you are very hot." He commented softly. His eyes were inscrutable pools of shadow that drank the light from the air. She gazed up into them as his fingers lingered, sliding up along the curve of her jaw to her hairline. "Burning hot."

She could see herself reflected in his eyes and realized with dismay that the dim light had activated the mechanics of her eyes. They were glowing, hot and orange, bright as two fiery coins.

Thane did not seem to mind as he touched a single silver curl before dropping his hand. The innocent gestures suddenly felt intimate enough to bring a splash of colour to her cheeks, but she could not seem to break the eye contact that was holding them together. She realized that she was pressed up against his chest, her arms still gripping him rather tightly. She could feel his breath on her face, warm with the scent of quoaky and mattat.

"Will you walk me back to the ship?" Shepard asked suddenly. She dropped her arms and shifted her weight back on her heels, but did not move away from him. In any other circumstance, she might be uncomfortable with the invasion of her cherished personal space, but she found herself wanting to be alone with him. She liked her time alone with Thane, even when she was sober and sitting across a table from him, talking about Ernest Hemingway or the drell poet he liked, Lorath Atheta. "I need some air, and dancing doesn't suit me."

"Of course, Shepard." He said politely, and seemed to shake himself before he finally stepped away from her. She could see him deliberately avoid her eyes as he held out one elbow for her.

Something about stepping out of armour and uniform had transformed her suddenly into a woman, and everyone was eager to treat her like one. It probably should have annoyed her, but she was grateful for a solid arm in the turbulence of her drunken world. She glanced around the room once more as they made their way to the door.

Jacob was whispering something in Miranda's ear and she was looking absolutely sultry as she whispered back. A few other dancers had paired off and were exchanging promising looks. Zaeed and Jack were gone from their booth, where Grunt was still snoozing under the table. Shepard would have worried, but part of the VIP room price was a guarantee that they would see all overly inebriated patrons safely home.

Tali's laughter could be heard over even the din of the music as Garrus said something while refilling her glass. She was glad the two of them had loosened up as much as she had, and felt suspicion rising as she caught the way Garrus' mandibles kept twitching when he looked at the young quarian. She made a drunken mental note to berate him mercilessly later.

For now, they moved through the door and Thane gently nudged the patrons of the main bar away. A moment later, they emerged into the constant, artificial neon light of the wards. She took a few deep breaths, attempting to sober herself.

"Are you well, Shepard?" Thane asked. He was drunk, she knew, but not nearly as drunk as she was.

Shepard nodded, swallowing hard and forcing the worst of the haze away from the corners of her vision. It worked, at least somewhat, and she cleared her throat. Her mouth made the decision before her brain even realized considering it, "It's Jane."

"I'm sorry?" He asked, sounding politely confused. He always did everything politely, and she felt her forehead crease as they moved forward into the crowds of shoppers and partygoers that crowded the wide boulevards of the ward.

"My name. It's Jane. You still have to call me Commander or Shepard or whatever during missions and all, but for now it's Jane." She was not sure why she was telling him that. It was probably the work of Drunken Shepard.

"Jane." Thane said slowly, tasting the name as though it were exotic and new instead of the definition of plain. "I like that. It is much more musical than Shepard. Or Commander."

She had to laugh. She had never thought she would hear someone call her fake name musical.

"What does it mean?" He asked, as they continued to move through the crowds.

It was hard to ignore the stares from those who recognized her as the Savior of the Citadel or the Butcher of Torfan. It was impossible to ignore the twenty-foot tall image of her face that flashed above the ward as a Citadel journalist report that she had been spotted 'carousing' with her 'wild crew of misfits' at Dark Star. She just laughed again, shaking her head, too full of liquid bliss to be bothered by the attention.

"Jane? It means 'gods grace'." She explained as the reporter made a disapproving face and clucked her tongue. The stern noise boomed across the wards, and Shepard thought it sounded ridiculous, like a giant chicken. She laughed again. "What about Thane? Humans use that name too, did you know? It means 'landholder'." Shepard had spent enough sleepless nights pouring through old books to pick up a few odd facts. She had only remembered the thing about the human name Thane because it struck her as a funny coincidence.

"Among the drell, Thane means 'one who watches'. I have always thought it to be a funny sort of coincidence."

"Really?" Shepard asked, bemused. "You're so serious. I didn't think you found anything funny. I don't think I've ever heard you laugh." She wracked her brain for a moment and came up with nothing but a rare smile on his part. Even Zaeed was jollier, when the humour was dark and at least a little bit violent. She thought about her statement and winced when she realized how judgmental it sounded - as though he were some emotionless automaton. "Sorry. I just mean that you don't exactly wear your feelings on your sleeve."

"It's true." He said, sounding blessedly unoffended. She was not entirely sure she could find her way back to the ship if he left her here, and she did not fancy the idea of the pretty blond journalist who read the morning news showcasing her limping drunk through the back alleys and making another chicken sound over the loud speakers. "Drell are a stoic race, by most standards, and I am more disciplined then most. It was part of my training."

His voice dipped low when he mentioned his training and they came to a long staircase that descended toward the docking terminal. Shepard regarded the stairs with a suspicious eye before looking at her feet crammed in the tiny, uncomfortable shoes. After a moment she heeled out of them, stretching her reddened toes gratefully. Thane raised a single scaly brow and she returned his look with one of clear challenge, daring him to say anything about it. He chose not to pursue it and took her arm again after she had scooped up the borrowed shoes, carrying them in the crook of her elbow.

He cleared his throat as cautiously as she picked her careful, drunken way down the stairs as though she were descending a treacherous mountain side. "I wondered about those. I know many human women wear them but..." His voice trailed off as though he was struggling to find a polite way to say something he thought might be impolite.

"But I'm not exactly feminine." Shepard supplied for him.

"No, it is not that." Thane said, sounding thoughtful. "You are beautiful, and very female. But... not like Miranda is. You are more solid, grounded, stable." He paused, glancing sideways at her as she struggled to contain her snorting laughter by folding her hand over her mouth. "If I've offended you, I apologize."

"God no." Shepard laughed. "What kind of woman gets offended when a handsome man calls her beautiful? I'm just not used to being complimented on more than my shooting and smashing skills."

"I feel sorry for those who see nothing else worth complimenting in you." Thane said, sounding so serious that Shepard stopped laughing and glanced over at him. He was pointedly avoiding her eyes again, staring ahead at the Citadel's security checkpoint.

She mulled their conversation over and decided that they were definitely flirting, if only in the awkward, uncomfortable way two completely unsocial people could manage to flirt. She was not sure how she felt about that revelation. Drunken Shepard, who swore too much and laughed at Jack's jokes, was egging her on mercilessly and Sober Shepard was too far gone to do anything about it.

"How would you compliment me then?" She asked as a grid of blue light swept over them, scanning clothes, underwear and DNA for anything unusual. After a moment the door slid open and they continued their slow pilgrimage back to the ship.

Thane was quiet until they were out of earshot from the guard, he merely looked at her with his fathomless dark eyes. "Ask me that again when both of us are more sober."

"Can't think of any appropriate examples?" Shepard laughed, punching in the authorization code at the airlock. The door slid open and she took a few steps before she realized he was no longer beside her. She turned to see him still standing at the door, looking at her. His eyes were not quite so inscrutable now, and she was not sure how she should feel about what she could see reflected in their black depths. Drunken Shepard was drawing attention to the heat building in the pit of her stomach, but even her alcohol-fueled influence could not convince her to act on that. She might be drunk, but self-control was not something she surrendered easily.

"No." Thane said, breaking the quiet of her thoughts. His voice was soft, she had to lean forward a little to hear him clearly. "I can't. Not at the moment at least, feeling the heat coming off you, seeing you dressed like that."

She could not help it, heat flooded her cheeks and Shepard turned away. She was acutely self-conscious, and that seemed to snap Thane out of whatever fog he had been trapped in. He looked off to the side and scratched at one of the heavy, solid scales of his forehead, taking a tiny step forward so the chamber could seal and the decontamination lasers initialize. There was a long, heavy moment of silence.

"I didn't mean..." He began, clearly embarrassed. Shepard cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"When we're both more sober." She smiled at him, meeting his eyes for only a second before she had to look away again. Caught in this tiny room with him, with the sudden explosion of physical tension between them, it was getting harder and harder to ignore Drunken Shepard's urges and the spreading heat in her belly. She had to though, since jumping team members and having enthusiastic interspecies sex in the decon room was generally frowned on.

"As you say." Thane agreed.

The tension in the air relaxed, though it was far from disappearing, and Shepard swallowed hard. She had to concentrate on smothering her burning libido and quashing the dirty thoughts that kept flittering up, complete, vivid fantasies of exactly what those stripes of dark scales looked like on his biceps, or his chest, or lower down...

Shepard shook herself as a bell dinged, signaling the end of decontamination. She had sobered up quite a bit it seemed, during the walk and the decon. She could almost see straight, and when she walked the world did not pitch and shift quite so violently as it did before. She could feel the first traces of the monstrous hangover that would be disabling her by morning, a dull pounding that slid back and forth between her temples. She picked her way over to the elevator, suddenly wanting nothing more than a cold shower and her soft bed to sprawl in. With this much liquor in her system she might even manage a dreamless night. It did not happen often, but she cherished the occasional eight hours of complete blackness.

Thane followed her quietly to the elevator and stood with his hands folded behind his back. Shepard leaned heavily against one of the rails, flexing her sore toes against the steel floors. They had gotten very cold, but there was no way she was going to force those heels back on.

"I hope you sleep well, Jane." Thane said softly, as the elevator opened onto the silent third floor.

She desperately wanted to step out of that elevator, follow him to Life Support and that little military cot he had pushed into one corner, but she merely bit her tongue and nodded at him.

He hesitated for a moment, torn. Grasping her hand in his, he bent at the waist and laid a gentle kiss on the inside of her wrist, where her pulse throbbed under the golden skin. After a moment he straightened, and stepped out of the small space.

As the doors slid closed behind her Shepard resolved to read up on drell customs and meanings. Tomorrow. Or whenever this looming hangover worked itself out. She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand as the elevator climbed to her quarters and caught the subtle, lingering scent of his skin there. His lips had been as pleasantly cool as the rest of him against her heated skin.

She took that cold shower almost the moment she arrived, leaving a trail of clothes from the door to her shower stall. As she stood under the frigid water, she felt some of her warm ardour melt away, but not enough to make her truly comfortable. When she stepped out, she shivered and took a moment to look at herself in the mirror again. The scars were still there, the unpleasant pale hair, the inhuman eyes. Maybe those things did not bother Thane. As she turned in a circle, she imagined herself a rag doll, shredded pieces sewn roughly together, as though by a clumsy child. Sighing, she dried herself off and pulled on some gray shorts and a white tank top before collapsing into bed. It did not take her long to fall asleep.

As her body lay among the soft sheets, the iron skies of Mindoir rumbled in her mind, heavy with the promise of rain.


	2. Say Fuck Again

"Uh oh." Jack said, as Shepard appeared at the bottom of the staircase balancing a tray of breakfast in one hand and two mugs of coffee in the other. The space she had claimed for herself was a disaster, littered with piles of junk, discarded clothes and towers of empty cups. The woman herself was sprawling on her military cot, legs braced against the wall as she thumbed through a data-pad. "Why are you sucking up, Shepard?"

"Can't I just be nice?" Shepard asked, handing over a plate of eggs and sausage that Jack seized and attacked immediately, despite any suspicion she might harbour.

Shepard squeezed one cup onto the corner of the desk between untidy piles of data-pads and cradled the other in her hands as she collapsed into the only seat available, an uncomfortable chair draped with a scratchy old blanket. The strong, dark smell of coffee was enough to steady her stomach for the moment, but she still felt remarkably like her guts were about to explode out of her chest at the slightest provocation.

"No." Jack replied off handedly, through a mouthful of scrambled eggs and diced red peppers. "You want something."

"I want to sit down here where it's dark and quiet, so my head doesn't pound as badly." Shepard muttered, blowing lightly on her coffee. "I still feel like I'm going to keel over and die at any moment."

"You were really that drunk huh? Well fuck me, Shepard. I didn't know you had it in you." Jack smacked her lips appreciatively.

"Didn't Zaeed take care the fucking?" Shepard asked, crossing her ankle over her knee and leaning back in her seat. She was dressed in her close-to-shapeless black jumpsuit as always, all her scars but those scored across her cheeks well covered. She felt infinitely more comfortable than she had in Miranda's clothes, even after everyone had confirmed that she did not look like a gargoyle. She stretched out her toes, encased in her scuffed, well broken black combat boots as Jack laughed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and reaching for coffee.

"He's got a lot of stamina for an old fuck." She confirmed, eyes dancing as she slammed back mouthfuls of black caffeine.

Shepard sipped her own drink slowly, letting the heat trickle slowly down to her unsteady stomach. After puking for a good twenty minutes she had not dared to risk anything more solid than water. After a tense moment of uncertainty she felt confident enough to take a longer drink.

"How was Krios?"

Shepard looked up from the dark swirls spinning across the surface of her coffee and fixed Jack with a decidedly unimpressed look. Not to be waylaid by a glare, the other woman merely wiggled her eyebrows and made a lusty face.

As Shepard's stony silence stretched on Jack resettled herself on her cot, chewing slowly on her last sausage link as she stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. "I hear that drell are supposed to be demons in the sack." She said loudly, glancing at Shepard out of the corner of her eye. "They've got these long, flat tongues and apparently the neck isn't the only part with those ridges. And the size of them, I knew this black hearted bitch on Omega who kept a drell around and she told me he was-"

"We didn't do anything." Shepard said finally, as Jack lifted her hands to indicate a size roughly equivalent to a large cucumber or a small ferret. She could feel her cheeks burning, and avoided the other woman's eyes as she cursed at her own bashfulness. "He went to his room, and I went to mine."

Jack was silent for a moment, before she dropped her hands and fixed her commander with a long, disbelieving stare.

"You total cock-tease!" She said, throwing her pillow at Shepard's face. Shepard blocked it with one hand, almost spilling her coffee in the process, and glared at the other woman. She threw it back, with enough force to make Jack return her glare.

"I am not a cock-tease." She replied.

"Whatever, Shepard." Jack sighed, rolling onto her stomach and jamming both fists under her chin. Her long, slim legs folded up, ankles hooking around each other as she studied Shepard's glowing red cheeks for a long moment. "What the fuck is wrong with Krios anyway? I mean, I'd never fuck him, but he seemed just right for you. All polite and serious, never smiling at anything, just killing the shit out of everything that gets in his way. You two are fucking soul mates or something."

"Say fuck again." Shepard said, trying to edge away from the current vein of the conversation.

"Fuck." Jack answered amiably. It was her favourite thing to do and her favourite word. The only thing she enjoyed more was opportunities to throw lewd insults at her commander. "Now answer my goddamn question."

Shepard sighed dramatically, draining the last traces of coffee from her mug as she thought about how best to answer. At least, the best way she could while taking her present company into account. The truth was she was not sure why she had not jumped, quite literally, on the opportunity that had been provided to her last night. She was reasonably sure that if she had asked, or even hinted, that she was interested in something physical at that moment she would be trying to put on her clothes without waking Thane up at the moment, and that nagging empty heat that pooled in her stomach far too often for her liking would have been at least temporarily abated.

"I don't want to date a crew member." She said finally. She still remembered what it was like losing Kaidan. "They die, or they move on, or they lose faith. In the end, no matter how it happens, they leave and you haven't done anything but hurt yourself. I know not to stick my hand into the fire when all that I'll get is burnt."

"Who said anything about dating?" Jack asked. "I don't know if Krios wants to hold you close and whisper sweet nothings into your ear, but I do know he wants to push you up against a wall and fuck you bow-legged. Even he can't mask that."

"Thane isn't like that." Shepard said, sounding defensive.

"All men are like that." Jack insisted. "If you'd offered, he would have taken the opportunity."

Shepard bit her lip, remembering the heat smouldering in Thane's dark eyes last night. He had definitely expressed a physical interest in her, but the way he spoke to her was so devoid of the mindless lust that Jack was describing. When he looked at her she was sure he was seeing something more than a notch for his belt.

But then, what did she know about how drell operated? For all she knew they were only allowed to have one 'true' mate, like turians. Or hell, maybe having sex was the equivalent of getting married in their culture. She had no idea.

"You have a bleak outlook on men, for someone who enjoys them as much as you do." She said finally, which seemed a safe answer for the moment.

Jack shrugged, rolling onto her back again and reaching for the data-pad she had been using before Shepard brought her breakfast. She thumbed the side and text blossomed across the screen in neat rows. "Men are like knives, or guns. They can be very, very useful." She allowed herself to smile, painted lips flicking up as one hand stroked the fresh hickey Zaeed had left just under her jaw. "But in the end, they're just tools. Tools break, or malfunction, or turn out to be less useful then you thought they'd be. When it comes down to it, you don't have anything but yourself to rely on."

Shepard knew when she had been dismissed and pushed herself out of the chair. After collecting Jack's dishes, she made her weary way to the staircase and began to climb. All the Cerberus facelifts and cybernetics in the world could not mask that she was getting older, and a night of heavy drinking had made even her carbon-fibre muscles ache as badly as her head. When she reached the top of the stairs she took a moment to lean heavily against the wall and close her eyes. The bald light bulbs hanging overhead were making her eyes burn and water fiercely.

Gabriella found her like that, when she stumbled down to Engineering a few minutes later. The young woman's hair was rough and unwashed, tangled around smooth, round cheeks the colour of sour milk. She straightened and managed a salute coupled with a queasy smile as Shepard looked up at her. She waved a coffee mug in the younger woman's direction, feeling exactly as rough as the other she looked.

"At ease, Daniels." She said, and examined her for a moment before shaking her head. "You're relieved from duty today, everyone is. The Normandy can wait until we feel less like dying."

"It's not so bad, Commander." Gabriella replied, her sickly grin brightening a little bit as she forcibly straightened her slumping posture. "And the Normandy might wait, but the Reapers won't."

Gabriella walked past to her station on the Engineering Deck beside Donelly. Shepard could see Tali typing steadily away at her keyboard across the way from the pair of them and rubbed at her pounding head through her thin white curls.

She had to smile a little bit, feeling pride for her crew and a little bit of guilt for not having any idea what the Normandy would be doing when they finally left dock. She pulled up her omni-tool and sent Councillor Anderson a short message to set up a meeting. That accomplished, she felt confident enough to head for the mess hall, the smell of Jack's scrambled eggs had made her hungry.

_Why do I even try with her,_ Shepard wondered as the steel box around her lurched. Her stomach flip-flopped for a moment, but a hard swallow stilled it once more. _I never get anything but insults for my trouble._

She supposed she should just give up, but truth be told she sort of enjoyed going to see Jack. With half the people in the universe acting like she was a saint and the other half like she was a monster, it was nice to sit with someone who assigned neither worship nor disdain to her name. Jack treated her the same way she did everyone else, except Miranda, and Shepard had to appreciate that, even if she usually punctuated her sentences with insults. Despite everything, Jack was as much her friend as Jacob or Mordin.

_I'd better not tell her though,_ Shepard mused. As the doors slid open and she emerged into the savoury smell of bacon and hashbrowns. _I don't know what she would call me if she figured out that I actually like her sometimes._

Rupert was standing behind the bar, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as if he had not been red faced and spinning Doctor Chakwas around the dance floor last night with a beer in each hand. There was no one on the ship who attacked their duties with as much single-minded fervour as Rupert Gardner, and Shepard mustered a big, genuine smile for him as she loaded the greasy plate and stained mugs into the dish bin.

"Commander." He grinned back at her, flipping an omelette studded with chopped green onions and bits of bacon. "I've got an order of _eggs a la Rupert _with your name on it." He slid the omelette onto a plate and shoved it across the counter, where it was immediately snatched up by a hungry crewman. Rupert spun across the hot stove, loaded with pans holding half a dozen different fragrant concoctions and whipped the glass lid off of one. The steam that billowed up off the sizzling eggs smelled divine.

"What constitutes _eggs a la Rupert _today?" Shepard asked as he spooned up a plate for her. The names and ingredients in most of Rupert's recipes changed on a day-to-day basis, but remained delicious. For the most part. She had promised never to mention the lentil curry incident again.

"Monterey Jack, green onion, roasted asari fire peppers." The cook reported happily as he passed her the plate. She inhaled and grinned as he held up a finger. After a moment of rummaging in the refrigerator he came up with an unlabeled jar and dipped a spoon into it. The salsa he spread across the top of her eggs was full of rich colours, and the smell that wafted up off of it made her stomach growl eagerly. "Homemade salsa." He explained. "Just for you."

Shepard smiled as he saluted, spatula still gripped in his large, rough hand. Rupert had started this entire mission respecting and admiring her, but after she had pulled him from the Collector pod his affection had become as fierce as that of a long lost relative. He blatantly doted on her, and it was so good natured she did not have the heart to wave him off. Besides, the vegetarian food he made her was too fantastic to pass up, even for the sake of propriety.

The mess was crowded and noisy, and her head still did not quite feel steady enough to brave the crowd, so Shepard headed toward the observation deck. Empty, since Samara had departed just hours after the Normandy made dock at the Citadel. Shepard was too much in the gray area between good and evil for the Justicar to feel comfortable remaining aboard.

Shepard growled to herself as she reached the door. She punched at the glowing green sensor a little too vigorously, fist banging steel. Swearing quietly she sucked on her wounded knuckles as she found a seat in the corner, settling down with the plate of eggs in her lap. Beyond the panoramic window the stars shone, pins of brilliant light scattered across the broad wash of raw stellar dust that surrounded the Citadel. It was very beautiful, but Shepard had not come to appreciate the scenery. She needed to think, and her eyes were looking beyond the vista of the nebula into distant futures.

She needed to know what the Council was going to do, she decided finally and without happiness. She had given them all the information she had gathered during the course of her mission against the collectors, including the IFF codes extracted from the derelict reaper. Their response had been as non-committal as ever.

"We appreciate the value of the information you've brought forward," the turian councillor had said, glaring down his crinkled nose at her. She had never known anyone who could turn courtesy into insult as easily as he could. "We'll be sure to review it thoroughly."

Shepard did not need to read minds in order know what that meant. She was being dismissed again, and the council had already decided that they did not believe her. If they ever called for her again it would be to ask favours or assign her errands. She would not be getting any help, from anyone, except maybe what scraps Anderson would be able to pass her under the table when the others were not looking.

She was thinking about Anderson, about the first time she had ever seen him all those years ago in a room painted with blood on a planet unthinkably far from here, when her omni-tool came to life on her wrist. Shepard looked up from the cooling remnants of her breakfast and tapped the holographic interface, drawing up the new message. It was from Anderson, curiously short and curt.

_Shepard,_

_Glad to hear from you. Meet me in my office asap._

She frowned and switched the omni-tool off and continued to chew her lip as she went to deposit her dirty dishes in the mess hall without a word of gratitude to Rupert. The greasy eggs had driven the worst of her hangover out, leaving behind a dry weight in her muscles.

Frowning, she tapped at the radio chip installed in her left ear along with her translator.

"Garrus, Miranda, suit up. I need you at the airlock as soon as possible." Shepard headed for the elevator, and waited with one fist resting on her hip as her other hand cradled her chin.

Before the elevator could arrive, the door to Life Support slid open and Thane emerged, dressed in his usual form-fitting leathers.

Shepard looked up and felt heat flood her face. Immediately furious with herself, she forced a smile and nodded to him just as the elevator arrived. She stepped onto the carriage and the prodded the button. The doors snapped shut and she breathed a sigh of relief as the elevator crawled up toward the Combat Deck.

Her lip was red and throbbing from the abuse being heaped upon it by her teeth, and Shepard frowned as she tasted copper on her tongue. Indecision galled her, rubbed her mind raw and made her insane. When she had a mission, a purpose and a plan, she was like a hurricane of movement, battering aside obstacles in pursuit of whatever she set her sights on. This single-mindedness had made her a terrific soldier, decorated with a dozen medals and a mountain of commendations and honours. In her present purposeless limbo, she could think of nothing but her own impotence and frustration.

Jacob had her armour out and was polishing it for her when she arrived at the armoury. The steel gray plate was already buffed to a faultless shine, but she had learnt that Jacob was the type of man who took his duties very seriously. When he saw her, he set down the shin pads and struck a crisp salute. His smile was somewhat uneasy.

"What is it soldier?" She asked, after exchanging the typical 'at ease' and 'yes ma'am'. Jacob shifted from foot to foot, his dark chocolate eyes shifting to the side as he rubbed the back of his buzz cut hair. He looked positively bashful. Shepard raised an eyebrow at him. Shepard unzipped her jumpsuit and pulled out the form fitting under-armour layer from its protective drawer "Out with it."

"I just want to apologize if I came off as unprofessional last night." He said finally. Zipper half undone, Shepard stopped and gaped at him. Jacob shifted and scuffed his toes sheepishly against the steel floor. "I was that bad huh?"

"Jacob, I told Engineer Daniels that she would love to kiss my ass and shamelessly hit on one of my best friends." Shepard said, zipping down and stepping out of her jumpsuit as she heeled the combat boots off. She was wearing nothing but plain gray athletic underwear. She often changed in the armoury, and while her scars seemed to have shocked him at first his eyes did not even flicker to them now. Or, if they did, it was subtle enough that even her mechanical eyes did not notice. "My mother used to tell me that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

The other soldier managed a laugh as she pulled the skin-tight, bullet-proof, vacuum-sealed underlayer up over her hips to slide her arms in. As she worked the zipper he reached for her chest plate, polished so bright that it gleamed in the hard light overhead. He held it out so she could slip her arms into it and helped adjust the padding so it sat properly.

Miranda and Garrus arrived as she was strapping the N7 gauntlets into place, the red line down her right arm like a streak of blood on coal. She crammed the helmet down over her head and felt it seal to the neck padding with a hiss, ejecting any air caught under the carbon-weave fabric. Her guns were laid out on the table for her in a neat row. She hooked the Tempest and M6 in place before clipping the Claymore against the small of her back as Jacob and Miranda tried to avoid giving each other coy looks and failed.

"If the opportunity arises, try not to comment on the sexual habits of the turian councillor's father this time around, won't you?" She asked with a sweet smile, one hand hooked into the thick straps that held her greaves in place.

Garrus rolled his dusty blue eyes and cocked his head to the side in an indignant fashion. "He called you delusional," he said, his voice thick with anger, his eyes flaring with sudden heat. "He implied that you were crazy or, worse, lying. For attention!"

Shepard raised a hand at the same moment that he raised his voice. "Garrus, I need you there when I make decisions. I rely on your advice. But I can't have you flying off the handle whenever someone is rude or gives me a dirty look." There was a moment of silence as his blue eyes continued to simmer with righteous anger.

"I know." He admitted finally, scratching at the metal plate grafted to the side of his face. He frowned, unable to relieve the phantom itch. "I just hate it when people talk to you like that. You gave so much..."

"Someday we'll be able to jump on Udina's desk, point at that smug hologram and chant 'I told you so' until our throats crack and bleed." Shepard assured him. He managed to laugh.

"You're right, of course." He said. "I'll keep my opinions to myself. Even if it means biting my tongue off and swallowing it."

Laughing, the three of them headed out to the dock where they could summon a cab, Shepard waved her credit chit across the fare metre and grumbled as the vehicle and the price started climbing steeply. Citadel taxi's were always rip-offs but she could have sworn the fare always climbed faster when they were headed to the presidium. Still, it was always wonderful to rise out of the purple neon light of the cheaper districts and see the graceful white ring of it encircling the purple fingers of the wards. The Citadel, for all its political mind games and bad memories, was a beautiful place.

Councillor Anderson was behind his desk, looking for all the world like a tired old man and nothing like the powerful soldier Shepard had known for almost twenty years. He looked up as she entered, and his smile was broad and genuine, though it faltered somewhat when he saw who was with her. None the less, he rose and clasped her hand in his, his grip solid and his warm brown eyes fixed on her black and orange ones. He was gaining weight, Shepard noticed, his uniform strained against his swelling belly and his face had gone haggard and jowly. She pretended not to notice.

"Jane," he began carefully and she knew something was up, "I'm sorry."

She sighed and rubbed at her eyes with one hand as Garrus and Miranda simultaneously decided to go have a look at the artwork hanging on the wall furthest away from the councillors' desk. She took a deep, centring breath and let it out slowly. "They still won't listen."

It was not a question, but he dropped her hand and paced over to his balcony, answering as if it were. "I gave them everything you gave me. Data, video, DNA samples, even the IFF codes," he laughed humourlessly, "which really pissed the Alliance brass off. I had to force them to watch the video of you fighting the human reaper. And it's still not enough."

He slammed his fist down on the edge of the balcony, his shoulders sagging under the weight of so much disappointment. She could see the pressure crushing the vital fire out of him, making him older even as she watched. He looked pale and wan under his weathered tan and she came up behind him and set a hand on one shoulder, squeezing it lightly. Shepard felt like screaming, but she forced herself to speak with measured calm instead.

"I didn't really expect them to believe me." She said bleakly. He laughed again, a cold dark sound without an ounce of humour in it at all.

"They did say thank you for the IFF codes." He informed her. "They'll be very useful."

"Eventually. Maybe. The ones I gave them were incomplete, heavily encrypted and riddled with viruses." Shepard replied casually. It was a great relief to see him look up, surprise melting into genuine amusement as he absorbed what she was saying. "Sure they'll cut down drift a little bit, maybe even as much as a third, but the Normandy can jump clean across the galaxy and hit its arrival point within five metres. I wasn't going to give that up for free."

Anderson laughed and made his way back to his desk, collapsing into the chair which creaked alarmingly under his weight. He shook his head and laughed again as she took a seat, opening a drawer and rummaging in it for a moment. He withdrew a bottle of the same bourbon she had been drinking at the beginning of last night and a pair of crystal tumblers. Bourbon at moments like this was a decade-old tradition for the two of them. "The other councillors are going to piss themselves when Alliance ships start making pin-point jumps through the relays," he laughed, "I can't wait."

Smiles still had the power to make him look like his old self. They pushed the frown lines off his forehead and his shoulders straightened which pulled attention away from his sagging belly. Shepard gritted her teeth, hating what she had to do now.

"I'm not coming back to the Alliance, David."

His hand wavered and a splash of precious amber liquor slopped over the side of the second glass, pooling on his desk. He ignored it. Just as she had feared, her words had purged any happiness from his face. The look her gave her was full of hurt and confusion.

"What do you mean you're not coming back?" He asked harshly, all thoughts of victory bourbon pushed aside as he stared at her.

"Thank god for that." Shepard felt her guts contract with sudden hostility as the unpleasant, grating voice of Ambassador Udina cut into their conversation. She turned in her seat and fixed the old man with a hard black stare that was full of undisguised hatred. She knew that the man was just as dead set against her as the council and would throw her to the wolves given the slightest opportunity. "You've given me enough nightmares to last a lifetime, Shepard."

"I really don't have the time or the inclination to argue with you right now, Udina." She replied stiffly, turning back to Anderson and striving for the same unflappable stoicism that Thane always wore so effortlessly. Her old friend looked like he had taken a physical blow and had not yet given Udina the slightest indication that he even realized he was there. His dark eyes were fixed on her.

"Don't worry; my business is with the Councillor, not with you." Udina replied from behind her. Shepard could feel his narrow black eyes, almost as inhuman as hers, boring holes in the back of her head. She did not let the slightest twitch of her lips reveal how thoroughly that bothered her.

"I don't have time for you right now, Udina." Anderson spared the other man only the most cursory of glances. "Go back to your office and I'll send for you when I'm ready."

"With all due respect, as your advisor-"

"As my advisor you are to obey me. Get the fuck out of my office." Anderson did not even bother to look at him as he gave the order, his eyes were still trained on her. Shepard could not resist the urge to glance over her shoulder at the defeated ambassador, deflating like a punctured balloon as he realized he was losing the battle for power and influence once again.

_I don't even play the game, Udina. _She thought with only a hint of smug satisfaction. _And I still beat you. Checkmate, motherfucker._

Udina glared at her as though he could read her mind, his eyes narrowing into slits of hot anger in his wrinkled face. Finally he gave Anderson a tiny nod, so stiff it looked like his head might just snap off at the neck and turned on his heel. He strode from the office with painful, straight-legged intensity. It looked like someone had snuck up behind him and stuck a dagger up his ass while they were talking.

"Maybe he'll stay there for longer than two hours." Shepard had to chuckle as she picked up her glass and after a moment Anderson seemed to relax as well. He even joined her mirth a little bit, as he absently swabbed at the bourbon he had spilled with a handkerchief.

"I wouldn't count on it," he sighed as they lifted their glasses to their lips and drank together. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as the alcohol burned its way down Shepard's throat. "But now you have to come back Jane. I want to see him walk around like that for the rest of my life."

"Sorry," she replied, sobering as they returned to serious conversation, "but my mind is made up."

"I don't understand." He confessed, leaning forward and refilling her glass. "I've known you through your whole career, and you've always insisted that you're just an ordinary soldier, following orders and dreaming of shore leave. What changed?"

"I died." The response, the flat matter-of-fact way she talked about it gave him pause. Their eyes met and she could feel the tiny lenses grinding together as she focused on him and see the unease crinkling around his eyes as he realized just how inhuman they looked, bottomless black ringed with fire. "I died a hero, and when I came back everyone turned their backs on me and everything I fought for. The Council I expected, my old friends I could understand, even Ash. But the Alliance... I gave my life to the Alliance. I killed people and took bullets, I sacrificed good men and women who were my friends, sweated and bled and cried, all for the Alliance and what I thought they stood for."

Shepard lifted her glass and tossed back to new drink, but it did nothing to erase the bitterness spreading across her tongue. "I died the worst kind of death there is for the Alliance, and they paid me back with slander and lies. They spat on everything I died for, and everything that Kaidan died for. They called me delusional, unstable, crazy." She set the glass back down, a little too hard. The hard rap of crystal on wood hung between them like an accusation. "They called me _crazy._ And I can't forgive them for that."

"Not all of them." Anderson argued. "You always had supporters."

"I always had you." She said affectionately, her anger softening. "And I had a bunch of cowards who stood silently by while their superiors dishonoured mine and everyone else's sacrifices. I can't go back. I can't trust them. And even if I could, I could never do what I need to do while I was with them."

There was a moment of silence while Anderson considered the drink in his hand, his dark eyes thoughtful and far away. Then he lifted it to his lips and drank. He was trying, she saw, to disguise how disappointed he was but she knew him too well for that. He looked betrayed and that, more than anything, made her feel guilty and ashamed.

"So what are you going to do?" He asked finally. He refilled their glasses again, and even though Shepard could feel the alcohol beginning to spread its blurry fingers through her brain she did not object. Drinking might be able to take the edge of the shame that kept stabbing into her every time she caught his eyes.

"I'm going to stop the reapers." She said simply.

"Just like that?" He asked, a hint of amusement managing to find its way into his voice. "I'm impressed."

"I don't have anything set in stone." She confessed. It was the closest she could get to actually admitting that she did not have a clue as to what exactly she was going to do. "But I'm going to stop them, even if I have to single-handedly take a blow torch to their blackened circuit boards. I'm going to have to kill hundreds of people, and I'm probably going to have to sacrifice thousands more. I'm going to destroy anyone who gets in my way, be they criminal or Spectre or Alliance Marine. I can't wear a uniform while I'm doing that."

Shepard sighed and picked her drink up again, leant back in her seat and watched him with wary eyes. She did not know what she would do if Anderson threw his drink in her face or just finally turned his back on her completely. He was the only real tie to her old life she had left, if she lost him it would be like the first thirty-four years of her life had never been real, just a few tenuous memories that felt more like dreams. He was the only thing that connected her to the person she used to be.

"And there's my crew." Shepard added, sipping the bourbon and rolling it around in her mouth. "The Alliance would want to replace them, and I can't have that."

"I thought you weren't working with Cerberus anymore." Anderson said quietly, and she knew she was walking on the edge.

Anderson might accept that she had to leave the Alliance behind for the sake of the Reapers, but it would be the ultimate betrayal if she left for a terrorist splinter cell. She glanced over her shoulder at Miranda, who apparently had found something incredibly interesting in the vicinity of her shoes. When she glanced up, her blue eyes were troubled, but otherwise inscrutable. For the first time since Shepard had met her, the other woman held her tongue and waited for her answer.

"I'm not with Cerberus." She said, her voice flat and brokering no argument. "And neither is my crew. Those people went to hell and back with me. They were willing to die in order to destroy the collectors and save their victims, which is more than I can say of any Alliance crew. They've earned my loyalty with blood and tears. I won't turn my back on them, not even for you."

She paused, her dark eyes softening as much as glass and metal can soften as she looked at his tired, gray face. "I'm sorry. But this is how it has to be."

"I'm sorry too." Anderson said, tossing back the rest of his drink. "This is war, I suppose, and in war we don't get to make our own decisions."

"This isn't a war." Shepard replied, shaking her head. "I hate war. The Blitz, that was a war, full of people dying for credits and empty honours. This is survival, plain and simple, and I always survive." She raised her glass as Anderson refreshed his and gave her a curious look as they clinked the edges together. For the first time, he seemed to realize just how profoundly different she was, and she was sure he preferred who she had been before.

"Except that one time." She amended, and actually managed to laugh, even if it was shallow and in the end, sounded more like crying.

Long after she had left his office the bitter taste of their toast lingered. Shepard chewed her sore lip as the rapid transit cab wove in and out of the thick traffic, the drivers of neighbouring vehicles reduced to nothing more than coloured smears, zooming past them far too quickly for her eyes to capture any detail of them. Sometimes she felt like she was lost here, among the very people she was fighting to protect.

"Shepard." Miranda's voice was quiet. She was staring out the window as well, but looked into her commander's face as the cab began its slow climb toward the ship docks. "Thank you for what you said back there."

Shepard shifted uncomfortably, the familiar weight of social discomfort making her tongue feel heavy and awkward in her mouth. After a moment she just shrugged and tried to act casual. "I didn't say anything that wasn't true."

The silence that followed was the comfortable kind that lies between people who respect and trust each other. Shepard watched the Normandy grow as they drew closer, the last coat of paint still drying on the messy patchwork that had been slapped over the huge scorch marks the collectors weapons had scored across the hull. The ship was almost as ugly as she was now. She just hoped it would prove as resilient.

When they emerged onto the Combat Deck from the airlock she gave the order to depart at nine hundred hours the following day. If she had not figured something out by then, she might as well just give up entirely.

She put her armour away, fitting the pieces into the snug foam moulds before sealing the drawer tight. She was shaking out her jumpsuit when the door to the armoury slid open and a familiar broad-shouldered figure appeared, blinking at her with large, startled black eyes.

"Excuse me." Thane turned his back respectfully. "I didn't know you were changing."

"I'm a soldier, Thane." She said, shaking her head as she stepped into her jumpsuit and pulled it up to her shoulders, slipping one arm into the sleeve and adjust the strap that held it at the wrist. "When you've had people watching you take a leak in a fox hole, you kind of forget about modesty."

Thane glanced over his shoulder, and slowly turned. His eyes remained fixed on her face for the most part, but she still caught the way his gaze picked over the glittering scars on her belly, chest and exposed arm. She shrugged fully into the jumpsuit and zipped it up to the neck, covering herself. She resisted the urge to ask him if he would still have been interested last night if he had known just how ravaged she was from her death. She had decided that it would be best for both of them to just forget their drunken flirting entirely.

"I forget that not all cultures are as physically conservative as the drell." He said softly, looking relieved that she had covered herself, if somewhat embarrassed at his own prudishness. He put the heavy sniper rifle he had been carrying on the table beside her own guns, not taking his eyes off her. She remembered the heat of his gaze last night, the quoaky making him bold, and fought her urge to flush red again. Instead she bent down and started lacing up her boots. Thane got a cleaning kit out of one of the drawers and took a seat at the table.

"Jacob will do that for you, if you leave your gun down here." Shepard said, as she got her own cleaning kit out and sat across from him.

"I don't doubt Mr Taylor's abilities." Thane replied politely. "But a true warrior knows his gun as intimately as his own hands and his own heart. Cleaning it is an excellent way to reaffirm that connection."

Shepard smiled as she started taking apart the huge Claymore shot gun, laying the pieces in an orderly row in front of her. She cleaned the lubricating oils out of the joints and reapplied a fresh coat, tightened the trigger before retrieving a little pot of varnish out and smoothing out the shallow scratches that scored the heavy steel. By the time she snapped the pieces back together the gun looked better than it had when she had found it on the floor of the Collector ship. She ran her hand down the shining weapon with the genuine affection of a warrior.

Thane was deftly snapping the pieces of his sniper rifle back together and they exchanged a shy smile as she reached for her M6. Underneath her jumpsuit she could feel the weight of the tiny orange stone he had given her last night pressed against her skin and her hand reached up to stroke it unconsciously through the thin cloth of her jumpsuit.

"I heard you gave the order to depart." His comment broke the comfortable silence of the armoury and Shepard bit her lip, nodding as she picked up the stiff-bristled brush and began cleaning the barrel.

"Tali needs to go to the Flotilla, check up on her family, see the new Admiral and everything." She said, trying to sound nonchalant. "So we're going to head out that way to drop her off. They're near Omega, where Samara's been exacting justice for the last couple weeks while the final repairs to the Normandy were being done so..." Her voice trailed off. She was not sure how to end that sentence.

"It would be nice to see Samara again." Thane remarked softly.

She nodded, glad to let the silence lapse for a moment.

"What are you going to do next?" He asked, and she winced and put the piece of the gun she was cleaning down. She continued to stare at the metal jigsaw spread across the table.

"I don't know." She answered finally. "What do you think I should do?"

Shepard glanced up and caught the startled look on his face. She was not the type of commander that often asked for counsel from her crew. Miranda supplied it in abundance, whether she asked for it or not, but even she had refrained from volunteering any advice on this.

Shepard had the sneaking suspicion that Miranda was as lost as she was. There was no dock that wanted the Normandy, no allies Shepard could turn to, and now that the Illusive Man had turned away from her, she had no resources. The galaxy was standing on the edge of the fire pit and no one would listen to her warnings. If she did not find an answer soon, everyone was going to step over the edge and burn.

"I don't know." He said, sounding as disappointed as she was. "But... when I find myself without answers to my questions, I find that meditation often softens my mind and lets me see what I have overlooked. It is strange how often the correct answer comes from the most unexpected corners of the mind." He hesitated. "I could teach you some, if you'd like."

"Ah... no. Thank you." Shepard snapped her partially cleaned gun back together, performing the motions mechanically. If there was one thing in the universe she did not need to be taught it was meditation. The small of her back ached in memory of the long hours she had spent cross-legged on the stone floors of her family home. "I'm going to go see Miranda."

Shepard put her guns away and gave Thane a polite nod before she strode out of the armoury, her mind boiling. As she punched the door for the elevator she found her lip between her teeth again, rapidly growing red from her continued attention. She frowned and crossed her arms over her chest, forcing herself to stop. If she kept this up she was going to chew it right off and be even uglier than she was now.

Miranda's office was unchanged. The only thing any different was the woman, deep circles etched under her eyes as she paced around the living area behind her desk, a data pad in hand. She was wearing a black jumpsuit, as different from Shepard's own attire as a jumpsuit could be. Skin tight with red inlay around the seams, it had the name 'Normandy' stitched over the breast where the Cerberus logo used to be. She was wearing her usual high-heels, shoes so treacherous Shepard had often wondered how she managed to stay upright while they were running and fighting.

"Shepard." She sounded surprised. They respected each other and Miranda was still her second in command, but social visits between them were few.

_Some people are just too different to be friends, _Shepard thought, as the elegant woman returned to her seat behind the monitors and keyboards of her workstation. They complimented each other well, making up for each other's weaknesses, but their personalities were so different she often wondered how they had managed to become as close as they had.

"Miranda. We have to talk about what we're going to do after we drop Tali off " Shepard said, claiming a chair across the desk, her hands gripping her knees. "We need a source of income. We need allies. Most of all, we need to start preparing for the Reapers."

"Of course." Miranda typed at one of her keyboards and then swung the base of her monitor around so that Shepard could see what she had put together. A list of possible sponsors, and what they would require in return for their credits, flickered on the screen. Shepard scanned the list quickly. It was not all bad but...

"Not these." She said, indicating which ones she disliked with a few sharp jabs of her fingers. "We aren't mercenaries."

"I don't like it anymore than you do, Shepard." Miranda replied defensively, turning the monitor back and punching at her keyboard again. "But sometimes the ends justify the means."

"Not on this ship they don't." Shepard replied stubbornly. The idea of hunting and killing for credits was more than Shepard could stomach. She had destroyed the collector base because she feared what keeping it would cost in humanity. She was not going to give up her own in exchange for money. "We'll find another way."

"I'm open to suggestions." Miranda replied, folding her gloved hands on her desk and looking at her expectantly.

Shepard frowned, her mind churning as she went through the various sources of income they could find without having to kill anyone. Bounty hunters and mercs really had it easy, she thought, as her lip found its way between her teeth again. She stroked the little stone hanging between her breasts under the jumpsuit. Mercenaries must never want for... want for...

The thought hit her, so blatantly obvious, that she could not believe she had ever missed it.

"We'll take it." She said, standing up. "From Eclipse. And Blood Pack, and the Blue Suns, and all the other rich criminals in the Terminus Systems."

Miranda looked at her thoughtfully and leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs and bringing one hand to her chin as she considered the proposition. Shepard was already ten steps ahead of her. Now that the idea had occurred to her she could not understand how she had ever missed it. They could not kill mercenaries forever, but for the moment it would serve the dual purpose of keeping fuel in the tank and removing one of the many hurdles that kept distracting the Alliance and the Council.

"It could work." Miranda said slowly, sitting forward and beginning to type, her long fingers flying over the keyboard. "For a while at least. The leaders aren't going to let us take too much, but if we spread ourselves through all three groups we can take a little from each and-"

"No." Shepard shook her head. "We aren't going to hit-and-run, shaving a few credits off the haunch and running when the beast turns around to snap at us. Miranda," she sat down and looked the other woman in the eyes, "We are going to completely destroy these people. We are going to end the reign of terror they've been exerting over the Terminus for thousands of years."

"I don't... what are you..." Miranda's face had gone paler than normal, the colour of milk, and she leaned to stare at her commander as if the woman had sprouted a horn and called herself a unicorn. "Shepard, do you have any idea how many fortified bases Eclipse maintains? How many vorcha breeding planets the Blood Pack has established? The sheer number of batarians that wear Blue Suns uniforms?"

"No." Shepard replied airily, her mind already working on exactly how she would need to handle the vacuum a lack of iron-fisted, greedy mercenaries would create in the Terminus. It would not simply be a matter of walking in, killing everything, and walking out. "But from the way you're talking about it, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume the answer is 'a lot'."

"Tens of bases, fortified against everything up to orbital nukes! Dozens of planets churning out endless streams of snarling foot soldiers! Hundreds of batarians, still thinking about the Blitz, and every one of them eager to knock your head and piss in the hole." Miranda fixed her with a dark blue gaze full of disbelief. "You specifically. Your name is still like a curse among batarians after..." She hesitated, but Shepard was too busy thinking to take much notice of it.

"Does that really scare you?" Shepard asked, when the Miranda was done. "After the Collectors and the Reaper? If we can't kill a bunch of mercenaries and unite the Terminus System, how are we going to fight the Reapers when they finally get here?"

"Unite the..? What are you..?" Miranda was at a loss for words, something that probably would have amused her if she were more in the mood for it. As it was, Shepard waved a hand and stood up, heading for the door. She had to get to her own station and start drawing up plans, plotting manoeuvres and reviewing what data there was on the mercenary groups.

"Don't worry." Shepard said. "I've got it figured out."

It felt good to say that, to feel so confident after spending so many long hours agonizing in an indecisive limbo while the expectations of the crew and the needs of the galaxy crowded her from all sides. When the elevator slid open and Thane stepped out, she was feeling so elated that she managed to avoid the awkward smiles and uneasy eye contact. Instead she just beamed at him, the lenses implanted in her eyes catching the overhead lights well enough to make them sparkle as if they were actually alive. He gave her a curious look.

"Have you found the answers you needed?" He asked as he stepped out of the carriage.

Shepard stepped in, pushing the button to take her up to her quarters. She nodded to him, her smile refusing to budge despite the very real doubts that Miranda had presented in opposition to her idea. For now, she was just glad to have something to think about again.

"It'll probably get us all killed." She told him as the doors began to slide closed. "But it's better than nothing."

For the first time in weeks, she did not collapse into bed upon arriving in her quarters. She was sick to death of sleeping; it was all she ever seemed to do anymore. With a spark of purpose restored, she parked herself in front of her desk and started retrieving anything that might give them an edge. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, assembling notes and mapping attack vectors, and tracking where EDI could hack for up to date information on mercenary numbers.

When her door slid open behind her and Shepard glanced at her the clock, she was surprised to see that almost nine hours had passed in a work fuelled haze. She smiled and stretched, her spine cracking all the way up to her neck. It was good to have something in her sights, even if it was a suicidal mission doomed to failure, it made her feel less lost and helpless.

"Shepard."

She spun around in her seat so fast she almost fell out entirely. Whoever she had expected to arrive, unannounced, in her quarters with a plate full of fried vegetables and rice, it was certainly not Zaeed Massani.

He set the plate down on the edge of her desk and smirked at her through the mask of thick scars that covered his broad, wrinkled face. "My mum used to tell me that if I stood around with my trap hanging open all day a bird would make a nest in it."

Shepard shut her mouth and blinked down at the food he had brought her, before looking back up at him. He seemed to be savouring savour her dumb shock and made no effort to explain himself. His blue eye was dull and blind, almost as dead as her mechanical black ones, but the other sparkled with its usual amusement. Finally, she swallowed and managed to speak.

"To what do I owe the honour?" She asked. Shepard reached for the plate, and her stomach growled appreciatively at the smell. She had not even realized that she was hungry. "And supper?"

"Supper was Rupert's idea." The veteran mercenary replied. He took a good look around her quarters, taking in the few model ships that she had salvaged after the wild ride through the Omega 4 Relay, displayed in their newly repaired glass case, and the small orange fish that were flickering around their ornamental tanks against the far wall. "Lawson said you hadn't eaten since breakfast and he got that look on his face, like he's your goddamn grandfather. I was already heading up here so he pushed that stuff in my hand and told me to come feed you while I was at it."

"You were coming to see me? Why? You don't even like me." Shepard asked , through a mouthful of brown rice, carrots and snap peas. She wished he had thought to bring her some water too. She knew better than to say anything though, as the old merc turned to face her.

"Why would you say a thing like that?" He sounded amused.

"Because I punched you, pulled a gun on you and thwarted your decade's long plot for ultimate revenge?" Shepard ventured, setting her fork down and fixing him with a hard mechanical stare.

He shrugged, and looked back at the fish who were pointedly ignoring his presence.

Zaeed shrugged and looked back at the fish that was ignoring his presence. "I should have known you were too noble to blow up Vido when all those other lives were at stake." He said finally. "It was my own damn fault for involving someone else in my personal matters. Not that I didn't think about killing you for it anyway."

Shepard stared hard at him, one eyebrow raised. This conversation was getting stranger by the minute, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Dealing with Zaeed was something like dealing with a venomous snake.

"If I knew this was going to be my last meal, I would have asked Rupert to make something better than stir-fried rice." She commented cautiously. She might be predictably noble, but Zaeed was anything but.

"I said I thought about it. I'm not entirely sure I could kill you anyway, even if I wanted to." He replied and looked back at her. "At least not without getting myself killed in the process."

Zaeed let the silence lapse again, clearly enjoying making her squirm. Shepard abandoned the thought of eating her supper while it was warm and pushed the plate away, she crossed her legs and glared at his smug, self-satisfied expression.

"So if you're not playing Good Samaritan, and you're not here to kill me, what do you want?" Shepard asked, her patience with Zaeed's games running thin.

"I want what I've wanted since Vido pulled the trigger, all those years ago." The merc finally said, his voice and face growing deadly serious in an instant. "I want to rip his rotten guts out through his mouth and strangle him with them. Barring that, I want to return the bullet he leant me."

Shepard blinked stared at him for a minute, before she realized what he was getting at. "You want to help us take down the Blue Suns."

"No." Zaeed shook his head. "I want Vido dead, and I'll do anything to accomplish that that. I don't give a damn if you burn every last Blue Suns stronghold to the ground on the way there. As long as I get my hands on the bastard, - as long as I get to look in to his eyes as I pull the trigger, I'll be happy."

Zaeed stood staring at her, and Shepard realized that he was waiting for an answer. She uncrossed her legs, thinking hard, and stood so they were facing each other. She searched his face, the broad features that might have been handsome once, and the deep creases a lifetime of war and struggle had gouged deep into the pale skin. She had asked Zaeed to stay and he had only laughed at her, and asked if she thought she could afford him.

"I can't pay you." She said.

"I realize that, Shepard." The merc replied, sounding unimpressed. "I'm ugly, not bloody stupid."

"And I still won't let you kill innocent people in order to get at Vido." She added.

"Yeah, Vido shot me in the face, aye? But he missed the brain. If the bastard tries to use a bunch of pissant miners as a shield again, let him go. Just promise me you'll keep hunting him. Promise me you won't stop until I've got his heart for a paperweight and I'll bring you your supper every night, in a fucking pink apron. I'm a patient man, Shepard. I've been patient since you were sucking on your mothers tit, and I can be patient a little while longer." Zaeed extended a weathered hand to her, his mismatched eyes boring into hers as though he could peel her face aside and see any of the deception he was expecting.

"I think I'd like having my supper brought to my quarters every night." Shepard said, a smile breaking across her face as she took the man's hand in her own. They shook. "I can't wait to see what you look like in pink."

"Bitch." Zaeed grunted, but his smile made the slur somehow good- natured. His promise secured, he turned on his heel and left without another word.

Shepard slumped back into her seat and pulled the lukewarm meal back toward herself, picking through the greasy rice to get at the tender cooked vegetables. She nibbled on a pea pod as she turned back to her monitor, surveying the plans she had made.

They would have to shifted, she had planned on going after Eclipse first and she doubted that the Zaeed would be patient enough to wait for her while she ripped through one group up before she turned her sights on the Blue Suns. Shepard finished her dinner as she made the changes to her movement patterns and uploaded them to EDI's navigational database. By the time she had finished, that she was bone tired, her eyes dry and aching.

Shepard undressed, leaving her jumpsuit in a wrinkled pile on the floor as she pulled on her usual cotton shorts and tank top for sleeping. She reached behind her neck to unclasp the green silver chain that hung around her neck, and caught her reflection in the polished glass of the fish tanks, the stone at the end of the chain shining with the same hot orange intensity of her eyes. After a moment of thought she dropped her hand and climbed in to bed. It was probably a coincidence that everything had become so much clearer in the day since Thane had given her the chain, but she could use a little superstitious faith in something right now.

Despite everything, including her own words in the face of Miranda's cynicism, doubt gnawed at the back of her mind. There was so much that could go wrong with this, so many variables she could not predict. It would be nice to have a magic stone that could make everything clear to her.

Shepard closed her eyes as the light dimmed automatically, and the stars silhouetted the long arms of the wards overhead. She slept, and dreamt of the gray fields like she always did.


	3. Close Encounter

"Open wide and say 'ah'," Doctor Chakwas instructed, a tongue depressor in one hand and a decidedly unhappy expression on her face.

Shepard obeyed and the urge to roll her eyes and huff in the process. The doctor peered down her throat critically and tapped a note onto her console before disposing of depressor and her sanitizing gloves. She sank into her seat, folding one hand against her chin and giving the commander a long, hard look.

"You haven't been doing your yoga," Dr. Chakwas said stiffly.

Shepard shifted on the examination table, the cold of the steel pressing right through the disposable covering and raising goose pimples across her bare thighs. "You can tell that just by looking at my throat?"

The doctors' lips did not so much as twitch in response, her cool gray eyes communicating oceans of disapproval.

Shepard shifted uncomfortably again, folding her hands in her lap and trying to quash the ridiculous sense of guilt that the other woman's disappointment was generating. "I do it when I have time."

"Commander..." Chakwas leaned back in her chair, studying the ceiling as though it could provide her with the power to force her commander to take better care of herself. "I shouldn't need to explain this to you. Again."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Shepard launched herself off the table, toes curling as her feet made contact with the freezing cold floor. She snatched up her jumpsuit and kicked one leg into it as she pointedly avoided meeting the doctors' eyes. "Muscles, tendons, strain, injury. I know."

"Can you at least pretend that you take this seriously?" The doctor asked, punching a few keys on her computer. "Your tendons were not designed to carry the kind of weight your cybernetic implants have put on them. If you don't do the yoga as recommended and show up for all your chiropractic appointments, you're going to start feeling some very negative effects."

"I know," Shepard insisted as she pulled the jumpsuit up to her waist and toed into her combat boots. "I do, and I understand. But there just aren't enough hours in the day, doctor. If I've got to choose between saving the galaxy and having you bend my spine into a more pleasing shape, I've got to go with the galaxy. Besides I-"

"Feel fine." The doctor finished, none of the irritation leaving her tone. "You seem to have plenty of time for crunches and push ups."

"How do you know about that?" Shepard asked, leaning against the exam table to lace up her boots. Two hundred one-armed push ups could get even her troubled mind to sleep, unlike yoga or Chakwas going crazy on her spinal column.

"I can see it in your muscle tone and tension. I am a doctor." Chakwas sniffed, "Plus, EDI told me."

"Traitor," Shepard grumbled, glaring at the ceiling even though the AI core was actually no more than ten feet to her right. It was a tough habit to break. She glanced back down in time to catch the data pad that Dr. Chakwas threw at her. She snatched it out of the air and glanced at it, "What's this?"

"A comprehensive explanation of exactly what will happen to your body and your combat abilities if your tendons continue to degrade at their current rate. Maybe it will inspire you to give a damn."

"I do give a damn," Shepard insisted, but the doctor turned back to her console with a dismissive wave. Sighing, Shepard finished zipping and strapping her jumpsuit into place and left the medical bay, heading out into the warm scent of cooking food and the babble of mess hall conversation.

Chakwas was warm and friendly when they drank brandy or drew all the curtains and pretended to be in serious talks while they played gin rummy, but she was the most dedicated and persistent doctor Shepard had ever known. She supposed she should be grateful for that, but at the moment all she was feeling was a vague mixture of guilt and irritation.

"Commander!" Shepard was greeted by an eager wave from Yeomen Chambers, who was sitting with Engineer Daniels and immersed in deep conversation over the latest issue of Spectator Magazine, one of the classier rags that followed semi-famous people around and took embarrassing photographs. "You made the front page!"

Shepard moaned as Gabriella threw the magazine at her with a squeal of laughter. She examined the front page, expecting some sort of head shot with the familiar 'hero or traitor' or 'guess her dress size' headline. Instead she was greeted with a picture of herself poured in Miranda's clothes as she clung to Thane's arm, rosy-cheeked, bare foot and laughing. She felt the colour drain from her face as sat down heavily beside the other women.

"I can't believe this," Shepard breathed, cupping her forehead as she skimmed the headlines. 'Hero spotted on intimate walk with unknown drell' and 'see who Commander Shepard is REALLY bending over for'. She felt the blood return to her face in a scarlet blush.

"Neither can I," Gabriella chirped, a wicked grin spreading across her face. "Why didn't you tell me you were banging Thane? I want all the juicy details. I've heard all sorts of things about drell mating customs, mostly from Fornax granted, but if only half of them are true then you are one lucky bi-"

"Gabby!" Kelly interrupted, punching the engineer hard on the arm. "Shepard's on duty."

"Oh. Right. Sorry, Commander." Gabriella blushed and Shepard just sighed, waving her hand helplessly as she thumbed through the magazine to the full story. Apparently the photographer had followed them for quite a while, since there was a shot of her with her arms around Thane's chest as he stroked her cheek, and quite a few snapped from various moments during their rambling walk back to the ship.

"I don't think I can be too much of a stickler for propriety right now." Shepard said faintly, rubbing the bridge of her nose. The seam of the break always ached when she was under stress and it was suddenly throbbing. "God, let me guess - everyone on the ship has already seen that?"

"It's taped to the wall in the women's rest room," Chambers winced, "I don't know about the men's."

Shepard abandoned rubbing her nose, closed her eyes and put her head on the table as she wished desperately that she could melt through the floor and be gone from the galaxy forever. After a few moments of nothing happening she forced herself to laugh, and folded her arms over the back of her head.

"A thousand sentient super machines are coming from beyond the stars to eat our souls and THIS is what people read about?" She moaned and pushed the magazine away.

"It's a sorry state of affairs." Kelly agreed, and patted her shoulder. Gabriella cooed sympathetically from across the table. The silence stretched as Shepard sat with her forehead pressed against the table, not looking or speaking to either of them. Gabriella took a sip of her coffee. Kelly cleared her throat and flipped a couple pages to an article about the actress in the new season of Vaenia.

"So, are you banging Thane?" Gabriella finally asked.

"What?" Shepard looked up, a napkin that had been on the table sticking to her forehead. She clawed it off and fixed the engineer with her calculating dark eyes. "Of course not. Why would you even ask that?"

"Um, maybe because of this?" Kelly replied, flipping immediately back to the photo spread and indicating the picture of Thane caressing her cheek as she stared up into his eyes. Shepard sighed and put her head in her hands, struggling for control of her rapid breathing. "You two are basically eye-fucking each other."

"We were drunk," she said plaintively, rolling her eyes, "Really drunk." Shepard let her head fall back into her hands, pressing the heels of her palms over her eyelids.

"And you used to spend every spare second in Life Support. Now you avoid it like he's got the plague." Gabriella chimed in, taking another sip from her coffee mug, the rim concealing her amusement for a moment.

"I'm not avoiding him." Shepard lied, pushing herself to her feet. The two women stopped giggling for a moment and regarded her. She seized control of her emotions and her face in a split second, forcing her lips up into a smile. Both Gabriella and Kelly visibly relaxed at the expression. "I should get back to work, reading gossip rags with off-duty crewmen isn't the example I want to set."

Kelly and Gabriella laughed and said goodbye, turning back to the article about the Vaenia actress and beginning to debate loudly on whether her character was going to end up with one of the male leads. Their friendly squabbling followed her down the hall as Shepard strode to the forward batteries, hands in her pockets as thoughts rumbled in the back of her mind like rainclouds.

"Garrus. Garrus, I want to talk to you goddamn it." The holopad on the door glowed crimson, and Shepard banged the heel of her hand and kicked at it until the indicator flickered green. Garrus did not look impressed, his steely blue eyes narrowed at her as she pushed past him in to the room.

"Did you want something?" He asked as she threw herself down in the usual seat, stretching her legs out and crossing her ankles.

"Yeah. Did you see the Spectator?" Shepard picked at her cuticles to avoid looking him in the eyes. She glanced up for a split second and could have sworn he was grinning at her. It was nearly impossible for her to read the subtle shifting of plates on his face, but his mandibles were twitching like they always did when he was trying to hold back laughter.

"I might have glanced at it." Garrus managed to keep his voice neutral. His previous irritation at being disturbed during his off-duty hours was gone; his blue eyes shined as she dropped her gaze back to her fingers, continuing to pick at them.

"Don't be a smart ass. Did you read anything other than the article about your soap opera?" Shepard asked as she arched one silver brow in his direction.

Garrus huffed through his nose and crossed his arms across his chest in defensive posture. "I did. And it's not a soap opera."

Shepard grinned at the sullen edge tempering his voice. "Just keep telling yourself that. Anyway, do you know if that article is tacked up in the men's room?"

Garrus laughed, his mandible flaring as he leaned back against the terminal, arms falling to his sides. "What? Of course not. Is it tacked up in the women's washroom?" There were a few moments of unimpressed silence before he just laughed harder and ran a hand over his head and partway down the rigid lines of his fringe. "Humans are strange. Why would they care if you're," he coughed discreetly to hide his chuckle, "bending over for someone?"

"Alright, first?" Shepard flipped him a solid middle finger, "Fuck you, you're an asshole. I'm not bending over for anyone and you damn well know it. Secondly, I don't know why everyone cares so much but they do. God, the only thing worse than military scuttlebutt is the civilian equivalent." She sighed, "What should I do about it?"

He looked confused for a moment, and rubbed the back of his neck. After a moment he shrugged. "Why are you asking me?"

"I don't know. I guess because this kind of thing is normal for the turian military." She said after she had thought about it for a second, "Don't you guys fuck all the time?"

"Close to it," he admitted, mulling over the question as his mandibles quivered. The movement drew her eyes. "Just forget about it. Everyone will be talking about someone else in a few days." He eyed her for a moment, "That is, unless there's something really going on there."

"The only thing going on in those pictures was a hell of a lot of asari alcohol and tequila. And that sour shit that Jack and Zaeed were drinking." Shepard sighed and shook her head, "I was a mess that night. It was my fault."

"What was your fault?" Garrus asked, cocking his head to the side. Shepard glared at him before glancing at her lap to find her fingers picking each other again, operating without the slightest urging from her distracted brain. She forced them apart, smoothing the wrinkles on the legs of her jumpsuit.

"This whole situation is. I got kind of... flirtatious. I was DRUNK," she snarled, and Garrus laughed. "This is really Jacob's fault for daring me to drink so much tequila. Actually, that's where the blame really lies. Goddamn tequila."

"I heard that a lot when I was working at C-Sec, But so what, you flirted a little bit. It's not like you don't ALWAYS flirt with him."

"I don't!" Shepard objected loudly.

Sure, she was social with Thane - and maybe she had always been a little attracted to him, like she had told Kelly dangerous men fit right in to her dangerous life. And he was more than just a body attached to a talented gun, he was smart and well-read, polite and eloquent, he did not mind her strange inhuman eyes or her filthy mouth, and he'd left the party to walk her drunk ass home like a true gentleman and-

Shepard stopped herself.

"Ok, maybe I flirt a bit. Sometimes," she admitted. Garrus rolled his eyes and she glared, sucking on her finger that was leaking a little bit of blood from her continued neurosis. What did she want to come out of this whole thing? The tang of warm copper spread through her mouth. "Maybe it's better if I just don't talk to him for a while."

"Maybe," Garrus said, shaking his head and shrugging, "I can't tell you one way or another."

"Alright, fine. I don't suppose you want to go... you know," Shepard tilted her head in the direction of the floor, the engineering decks below, "Toss each other around a little bit?"

"No thanks," Garrus shook his head, eyeing her with suspiciously, "After you threw me that last time I didn't walk straight for a week. Luckily Mordin knows turian biology well enough that he could snap my secondary vertebrae back in to alignment."

"You pulled my hair, asshole," Shepard said, standing up to stretch her arms overhead. The ache from her dislocated shoulder was entirely gone now and she sighed with relief, "And even you have to admit that throw was a beautiful thing."

"It was a beautiful thing that rearranged my skeleton in a way I'm not eager to repeat." Garrus replied. "Besides, pulling the fringe is a legal manoeuvre in turian hand-to-hand."

"You're just a big goddamn girl. Who's going to spar with me if you're too busy trying on your new dresses?"

Garrus shook his head, his mandibles vibrating with his laughter as he thumbed the button on his terminal that would open the door for her. Shepard stood, dusting off the seat of her jumpsuit with one hand as she headed back toward the mess hall.

"Maybe Thane will spar with you?" He called, right before the door snapped closed and cut off any reply.

Shepard sighed, running her fingers through her hair as she headed toward the mess hall. It had cleared out, and the magazine was still sitting on the table, discreetly turned onto its face so the advertisement for krogan perfume was facing the room rather than her drunken press shots. She picked it up.

"Who the hell would wear krogan perfume?" She wondered out loud as she turned the magazine over and examined the incriminating photograph again. The part of her that loathed attention in all its forms cringed at the garish headline. Folding it in half, she stuck it in the back pocket of her jumpsuit and headed to the bathroom to tear the copy that had been taped to the wall down.

Rolling the paper ball between her palms, Shepard emerged into the hall and felt her eyes drawn to Life Support. She had not set foot in there since the day before the celebration at the Dark Star, despite how thoroughly she tried to convince herself she was being silly. Thane was, if nothing else, completely in control of his emotions and as dedicated to professionalism as she was. If she went to see him they could just pick up where they left off, they probably did not even have to mention that night.

Which reminded her, she still needed to return the poetry collection and get her copy of 'Death in the Afternoon' back. If he liked it, maybe she should lend him Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' - she was sure he would like that. Then they could talk about books, or argue quietly about philosophy, or just sit, listening to music and drinking tea.

Shepard smiled. Whatever attraction she had for him, whatever discomfort she might associate with the half-pickled memories of their flirtation, she wanted to have that easy companionship back. It was a good decision, a very mature and responsible decision.

She headed down to the engineering deck instead. Chakwas wanted her to do yoga so by god, she would do yoga. She would do so much yoga that by her next check up the doctor would not be able to give her anything but praise.

One corner of the shuttle bay had been appropriated from the engineers and transformed into an exercise area, complete with mats, weight sets, and a heavy punching bag suspended from one of the rafters overhead. Shepard tossed the magazine face down on the floor beside the data-pad Dr. Chakwas had given her, as she shook the tension out of her muscles and began her warm-up stretches. Her shoulders were hard and full of knots that sent shooting ribbons of pain down her back as she eased them in small circles. It took far too long to get her blood flowing properly and her joints relaxed.

Chakwas had given her a long list of simplified postures to hold for a minute each and she had discarded them after the first attempt. They were not that different from the postures she remembered, except that they were designed to be mild and accommodate people who had not spent hours stretching their muscles and tendons to noodle-like consistency since early childhood.

Shepard was bent into Prasārita, legs spread with her forehead resting on the mat as her arms locked together behind her back, when she heard the door to the docking bay open. She closed her eyes, counting in her head and willing the intruder to be gone by the time she opened them. The door slid closed and she exhaled in relief, the silence unbroken by intrusive footsteps. Leaning forward, she planted her hands and pushed her chest forward as she sunk into Ṡvānāsana, legs straight behind her while she thrust her chest toward the ceiling when a quiet, softly amused voice pierced the steady rhythm of her breathing.

"What are you doing?"

Shepard jumped and her sweaty palm slipped, winding up face down on the mat with the wind knocked out of her. The only thing worse than being caught with her ass in the air as she bent herself into a pretzel, was falling on her face in the middle of it. She lifted her arm a little bit, catching a glimpse of booted feet. Sighing, she pushed herself onto her back and found herself looking into a pair of baffled black eyes.

Of course it was him. If she was making a fool of herself, who else would show up?

"You said you'd read the sermons of the Buddha. Don't you recognize yoga when you see it?" Shepard asked, resting her head against the cool mat and wiping at her sweaty face. She scratched at her scars before remembering about a lecture Chakwas had given her. The scars would never heal properly if she did not leave them alone.

"I assumed it would be more dignified, from the way it was described," Thane mused, cool stoicism turning his face back to inscrutable stone. "I didn't know you were a Buddhist."

"I'm not. It would be hard to call me a pacifist after all," she laughed breathlessly and pushed herself into a sitting position, knees folding up against her chest. "I'm not anything. I just... like yoga."

She hated lying, but he did not need to know about her aching, degrading joints. No one but the doctor needed to know about that.

Shepard reached for her towel that wasn't there. Her scars itched intensely, and she sat on her hands to control her twitching fingers as Thane bent down to peel off his boots, setting them down beside hers at the edge of the mat. She had never seen him outside of his usual black and gold leather before, covered from neck to toes.

His work out gear was charcoal grey spandex, a sleeveless shirt and snug knee-length shorts. His powerful arms looked only a little strange; every muscle just slightly out of line to her eyes, his scales shimmering metallically in the stark overhead lights. The stripes that started at his knuckles splintered at the elbows and shot jaggedly across his biceps like black lightening.

Thane cleared his throat discreetly, and she realized with a rush of mortification that she had been staring at him.

"Sorry!" She blurted out,"I've never seen your... your stripes before."

"I don't mind," he replied, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

A blush crawled up the back of her neck, and Shepard tried to force herself to come off as cool and unshakable. The way she shifted from side to side, unable to maintain eye contact probably did not do much to help her case.

Thane continued to look amused. "Do you do this yoga a lot?" He began his own series of stretches, swinging his shoulders in circles to loosen the joints and bending to touch his toes. "I almost never see you down here, except when you and Garrus are very determined to hurt each other."

"I don't do it as much as I should," Shepard admitted, watching his muscles ripple as he leaned from side to side to stretch his obliques, or whatever the drell equivalent was. "And our sparring is just friendly stress relief; I don't really try to hurt Garrus. Much. He just cries so much because inside he's a big girl."

Shepard was staring again, but this time it had less to do with mouth watering muscular definition. She had not studied drell in her close-combat courses at command school, they were too obscure to bother with when they needed to learn how to kill turians with their thumbs instead. Her eyes picked him over with predatory efficiency His stomach was outlined perfectly by the tight fitting spandex and she noticed that unlike humans, drell abdominal muscles were not divided by the rectus sheath. She was not really sure if that would make him more or less flexible. His pectorals were broader than the human equivalent, and combined with broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms, they made him look a little top-heavy. She was fairly sure she could unbalance him with a few hard shots to the stomach and take advantage of him from there.

"I take it that means he no longer consents to let you beat on him?" Thane remarked, drawing her out of her thoughts.

Shepard shrugged, studying his neck frill and wondering if that was more or less sensitive to punching then a human throat. The rippled crimson skin certainly looked like it would be soft and sensitive to touch.

"He'll come around. I'm just going to have to do yoga until then, unless I can convince Grunt to come down and take a swing at me." Shepard grinned as he shook his head, a soft flutter of sound that might have been a chuckle escaping the corner of his mouth.

"I don't think a krogan would be much good at sparring," he mused. "Even their affection leaves bruises."

"I guess I'll just have to suffer then." She sighed and she pushed herself to her feet to cracked her neck, feeling the aching tension in her joints ease a little after all the stretching. The hard work had reactivated a twinge of soreness in her shoulder, and she rotated it in circles as she bent down to retrieve the magazine and data-pad, intent on leaving him alone to exercise. Shepard did not want to get caught ogling him again, however much she might enjoy the experience.

"I could spar with you."

Shepard paused, glancing over her shoulder at him as she found her lip between her teeth again. She really could use a reason to smack someone around, even if it was all in fun. And hell, Thane might even be a challenge. She was used to being better than everyone at everything, but she had seen him fight with a kind of smooth, boneless elegance that was as deadly as it was beautiful. She put her things back down on the floor.

"Are you sure?" She asked, still a little hesitant.

Thane allowed himself a very small smile in response. "I promise to be gentle. I won't break anything." He sounded cool and casual, and it sent a stab of competitive adrenaline down her spine.

She glared at him and he met her smouldering gaze with eyes as cold and impassive as the void flashing past the shuttle bay windows. "I was top-ranked in hand-to-hand when I went to command school," she said as she stepped back onto the mat. Everything about this exchange had changed in the space of a few seconds. Their eye contact was intense, full of energy that had nothing to do with embarrassing drunken faux pas or unresolved sexual tension. They circled each other deliberately. "Better than most of my instructors."

"I would have been disappointed to learn otherwise, you are always the best at everything you do. That said, I've never seen you use hand-to-hand on the battlefield," he replied, eyes raking up and down her body as she moved. "Unless you count smashing open skulls with the butt of a gun."

"You don't need to use your fists if you're good enough with a gun." Shepard smiled sweetly, running through the various styles and fusions she had studied on the Callisto training station all those years ago.

"Is that a challenge?"

"It was more like a veiled insult, but you can take it as a challenge if you like."

Thane responded with an attack, lightning fast and angled underneath her guarding arm. Shepard shifted her weight and took a tiny step away, his fist only skimming her as she lashed a slap against the creased skin guarding his ear canal. He wove away from it effortlessly and dodged past her, spinning on the ball of one foot as the other sought the vulnerable junction of her knee. She bent and it connected with a heavy yet ineffectual thump against the flesh of her outer thigh instead.

They backed off and eyed each other again. Shepard felt a nervous sweat prickle against the back of her neck. He was much faster than she thought he would be.

She led their second contact, feinting with a punch as her elbow shot out and connected with his ribs, smacking the air out of his lungs and forcing him back a step. She followed through with an inside leg kick and he spun out of reach around her. His foot connected solidly with her knee and the joint gave, toppling her forward. Shepard tucked her arms over her head and rolled, coming up crouched a few feet away.

Ducking and weaving was not going to work with him, he was faster and more agile than any turian. Shepard planted her feet in a warrior pose, right toe pointed at him and the other foot braced behind her for balance and power. Thane eyed the new pose with approval and stopped circling. His black eyes were flat and unresponsive, they gave nothing away.

"You're better than most humans I've fought," Thane admitted as he took a careful step forward, still out of reach. She refused to break posture and attack him. Patience was her best weapon.

"I'm N7," Shepard replied, as though that explained everything, and he nodded.

They struck at each other again and again, until she was breathing hard and sweating. Shepard realized that he was definitely better than her as his blows began to land with more frequency, always exactly on target. She gave ground, parrying a chop angled at her collar bone and realized that she had missed the follow-up. His fist slipped under her guard and landed against her liver with jarring force that dissolved her strong centre of balance and sent her tumbling onto her back as pain seared up her side from the point of impact. She barely had the wits to cobble a defence together as he darted forward.

Thane had to take a moment to avoid getting a stomach full of her knee, and Shepard pushed herself out from under him. She grabbed his shoulders with both hands, levering her body against the mats and tried to throw him to the side. He was impossibly heavy, her throw dissolved into a heave and he wound up beside her on the mat. He wound a hand around her wrist, and the other clamped her elbow down. He applied the slightest bit of force and before she knew what was happening she was on her stomach, cheek pressed against the mat as he pulled her arm up behind her back and locked it in place.

Shepard kicked once, and his grip tightened in the barest hint of a threat. Sighing, she tapped the mat with her free hand, surrendering.

"Fine, you win. Just don't go spreading it around," Shepard growled as sweat dripped down her forehead and gathered in the seams of her scars, making her whole face itch unbearably. Her fingers spasmed, wanting desperately to scratch, and he pulled her onto her back so she was staring at the ceiling.

"You're very good," He said, as his face appeared above her, blocking out the painfully bright overhead lights.

She slumped back in exhaustion and shrugged, "Not good enough."

"I can show you how I won," he stood up and extended his hand. After a moment, Shepard took it, the warm scales grating under her palm. He pulled her to her feet as she raised one thin silver eyebrow as she scratched at her furiously itching scars.

"You're going to teach Commander Shepard how to fight?"

"I won't breathe a word," Thane promised, another elusive smile playing around the corners of his lips.

"Alright, fine. Educate me."

They fought twice more, Thane taking moments from their circling and striking to point out where her postures were weak or guards ineffective. Still, he always seemed to find a way around her most vigorous defences, while she only managed to land a handful of punches. Shepard wound up pinned on the mat, legs and arms twisted in unnatural positions until she tapped out, her frustration at the clumsy failures mounting.

Shepard was pouring sweat, every muscle aching with exhaustion when he came flying at her to cinch the third bout, arching a powerful punch toward her ribs that she barely parried with one arm. She slid her elbow underneath his defending arm and felt it connect solidly against his ribcage, forcing him to take a single, unsteady step backwards. For a moment his balance wavered and she threw all her weight behind a punch angled into the soft tissues of his stomach.

Thane absorbed the blow as it knocked him completely off balance. For a moment Shepard thought she had won, but his hands curled around her elbow and yanked her down with him as he fell. She tumbled on top of him, her head striking the unyielding mat as he planted his elbow in her stomach, driving the air out of her. Her vision spun and she was on her back, pinned with her arms incapable of doing anything but unleashing weak hammer blows against his broad back.

She tried to brace her legs against the mat and found his calves crossed across hers, just under the knees. Shepard could barely wiggle her toes. She blew a sweaty curl of silver hair out of her eyes and glared at him.

"You win again," she growled, "You aren't a very good teacher."

Thane said nothing. He was staring into her eyes and she realized how close they were, close enough that she could smell the exotic spice of his skin. He leaned close and she drew a quick ragged breath that filled her with his scent.

She should ask him to stop. She should push him away, his grip had become gentle enough that she could have managed it, but her brain was short circuiting, and she found herself paralyzed as he leaned close and she felt his lips brush hers, lightly, barely there at all. A moment later and they returned, capturing her mouth with full force.

_I shouldn't be doing this, _she thought as she kissed him back, her arms finding their way around his neck with no urging from her useless brain.

Both of his hands were in her hair, running through the sweat-soaked curls as his tongue slid along the seam of her lips and Shepard found her mouth opening for him, her back arching up against his warm inviting bulk. All the simmering attraction between them, the coy looks and careful flirtation was exploding into an intense white heat that was overloading every rational sense as his tongue coiled against hers. His mouth was sweet, hungry, and tasted like citrus and cayenne.

When Thane pulled back and cold air rushed into her aching lungs again, she was boneless, her mind drifting away on tides of pure physical sensation. Shepard opened her eyes and the sight of him staring down at her, as one hand slid out of her hair and down the smooth line of her jaw snapped her back into reality. She planted her hands on his shoulders and pushed him off. Thane watched her struggle to her feet impassively and she could barely make eye contact with him and she shook herself and tried to think rationally.

"I... that was..." Shepard sighed, scratching furiously at her itching scars, until her cheeks were a bright, angry red. She was having trouble focusing, her tongue still burning from the strange sweet-and-spicy flavour of his mouth on hers. "What was that?"

"You know what that was," he replied, pushing himself up so that he was standing across from her. She could not meet his eyes. She rubbed the back of her neck as her gaze darted toward the wide windows and the distant stars beyond. "You were a part of it as much as I was."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It's just..." Shepard sighed with frustration, pressing her hand against her forehead and squeezing her eyes closed. Indecision did not suit her. "It was a mistake. I shouldn't have... we can't..."

"I'm sorry," Thane said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "Perhaps I was too forward."

"No, you weren't. I've been careless. I just... I can't do this right now. Fuck, god knows I want to. But..." Shepard forced herself to look him in the eyes; he deserved that much from her at least. "I'm fucked up Thane. Damaged goods. And I can't get distracted, I can't lose focus. I'm the one that should be sorry."

"I don't care if you're 'damaged'," he said quietly, "if you're damaged goods, what does that make me?"

They studied each other for a long moment, his dark eyes searching hers. His skin seemed to shimmer, bright jewels of golden light dancing up his arms. That was strange. Shepard frowned and looked around. The colours too bright, straight lines wavering and melting before her eyes. She closed her eyes, opened them again. The stars beyond the windows were spinning in slow, concentric circles.

That was not right at all.

"Shepard?"

She turned back to Thane, cupping her forehead with one hand. She was feeling suspiciously light headed, her vision wavering as colour and light melted together. She could smell cinnamon and cardamom in the tone of his voice, and when he touched her lightly on the shoulder, she felt a spark of electric blue energy shoot up her arm, raising goose pimples to her shoulder.

"Is something wrong?"

"I feel... I'm... dizzy." Shepard grabbed hold of his elbow as the floor teetered unsteadily underfoot. She had dropped acid a couple times throughout command school, and someone had slipped mescaline into her beer once, but neither of those compared to what was happening to her now. She could hear the music of the stars moving outside her window and when Thane pulled her close and began leading her toward the elevator she could taste the warmth of his skin pressing against her.

The elevator ride took years. The overhead light shimmered as if they were under water, and the motion made her feel nauseous. She concentrated on Thane's arm on her shoulder and tried not to puke everywhere. She was sweating and shivering by the time the door slid open and he half-dragged her to the medical bay, bolts of white energy shooting from the overhead lights and landing all around them.

"Well, well, if it isn't my most difficul- what's wrong with her?" Doctor Chakwas had the ability to exchange wry disapproval for medical professionalism in a heartbeat.

Shepard felt herself pushed backwards onto a cot, and then there was a light in her eye, shining all the way back until the heat of its rays pooled in the back of her skull. The doctor ordered someone to get Mordin and her cool hand was pressed against Shepard's burning forehead as she felt the pulse pounding in her neck.

"Can you hear me, Shepard?" Chakwas asked, her voice slithering through the air like a green snake.

"I'm fine." Shepard said, and realized she had been repeating that for several minutes now. "I'mfineI'mfineI'mfine."

It might have been six hundred years before Mordin's broad face appeared above her, thin lips sucked into an uncharacteristic mask of concern. She had stopped shivering and was starting to enjoy the white-wine taste of light and the tinkling music it made when it struck the various medical instruments circling her bed. He took her pulse and examined her eyes again, taking blood from her arm before retreating out of sight. Shepard waved her hands in front of her eyes and laughed as they left ghostly traces of themselves in the air.

"Shepard. Feeling better?" Mordin helped her sit up and she nodded, thanking him as he handed her a cloth soaked with cold water. She mopped some of the hot sweat off her face and the back of her neck as he checked her pulse and eyes again, nodding in approval. Doctor Chakwas watched them with a dangerous scowl on her face. "Good, good. Body temperature and blood pressure returning to normal. Hallucinations?"

"Still there," Shepard confirmed, curling her cold bare toes against each other as the colours of the world continued to melt slowly into each other.

"Hmm, yes, makes sense. Should have come and spoken to me before hand, could have provided you with information, pills, coping mechanisms." Mordin handed her a small blue pill and a glass of water. Shepard stared at them both, not understanding, until he mimed taking a pill and drinking. Obediently, she swallowed the pill and drained the glass. The water tingled on her tongue, cold and sharp.

"Can provide pills until your body builds up resistance to hallucinogenic compounds. Should become easier to cope with as time progresses." He informed her cheerily, passing her a neatly labelled bottle.

"So you know what caused this?" Chakwas took a step forward and studied the long, awkward chemical name of the drug. "Will it affect the rest of the crew?"

"Not sure." Mordin turned to Thane, who had been hovering by the door as though he was unsure whether he should go or stay. "Planning on making oral contact with other members of the crew?"

"I... no." Thane replied, and Shepard pointedly avoided his eyes. There was a moment of tense silence while Mordin looked between the two of them, blinking with confusion.

"No problem then." He confirmed. The world was beginning to crystallize into a rational shape again as the professor chattered on about the complexity of drell-human liaisons, when Chakwas discreetly cleared her throat.

"I'm sure Shepard would like to rest after that," She said pointedly, and Shepard realized that she was right. The intensity of her hallucinations had ebbed and left her with an abiding exhaustion that mingled with the ache of so much yoga and sparring. As if to proving a point an enormous yawn racked her body, stretching every muscle to its limit.

"I'll escort Shepard to her room," Thane sounded relieved to have an escape route, so she did not point out that she really did not need any help to find the elevator and push a single button.

"Yes, yes. Pills should make any further activity safe. Come to me if rash develops." Mordin confirmed, scanning her blood work again.

Shepard opened her mouth to protest but thought better of it. She swung off the table and headed for the door with a murmur of thanks. She made a point of ignoring the look Garrus gave her over a cup of some murky dextro beverage in the mess hall.

"Shepard, I-"Thane tried to speak as they waited for the elevator to make its way down to them.

Shepard held up one hand to stop him and shook her head wearily, "Can we have this conversation when I don't feel like I'm about to pass out?" She was getting more and more tired by the second.

He paused for a moment and then nodded. "Of course. I'll bring your things to your room."

Shepard waved one hand in vague thanks. Thane did not follow her onto the elevator. She was gratefully slumped back against the wall, groping for the button that would take her to her cabin. The metal wall was cool against the back of her head, and she drifted, half sleeping until it lurched to a stop.

Shepard peeled off her jumpsuit and her sweat-soaked underwear, dropping them in a heap on the floor. She thought about getting into her sleep clothes, but gave it up after a long moment of thought. She collapsed naked on the bed, face down in a pillow and was asleep in moments.


	4. Up the Revolution

Shepard hated the ship Liara had claimed for herself more than she could accurately express. It went all the way to her bones. She pretended not to mind, not to feel the chill of the old steel seeping through her clothes, or the depression the constant grey light infused her with, but no matter how hard she tried, she always wound up pacing in slow circles around the place. She opened the windows that faced the setting sun in the vain hope that the warm orange and red light would cut the drear of the lightning storm that raged around the hull of the monstrous ship.

Liara looked up from the data console and made a strange face as Shepard fidgeted and picked her fingers, idly tapping at various terminals. She spent twenty minutes or more just staring at the only one she had forbidden herself from using - it contained copies of all her teammate's personal messages and extranet searches. She was still looking at it when Liara extracted a tiny disk from the work station.

"This is all the information I could find about the Blue Suns," Liara said, standing beside her old commander and friend. Her eyes followed Shepard's to the terminal, and a tiny smile decorated her painted lips, "I put that there for you to use, you know. No one but me will ever know if you do."

Shepard snapped out of her reverie and took the data disk, tucking it into a pocket of her jumpsuit and shaking her head, "It would be wrong. I wouldn't want people reading my personal messages or anything."

"Not that you send any," Liara replied, raising a dark, painted-on eyebrow.

Shepard laughed and shook her head. It was not like she had anyone out in the galaxy to send personal messages to anyway. It took her a moment before she realized that she had never mentioned that to the asari. "Liara! Do you spy on me?"

She felt a little foolish thinking that the new Shadow Broker would draw the moral line at invading her personal files, but she had never considered that Liara might spy on her.

"Of course I do. That's my job." Liara replied.

"But you know I have nothing to hide from you," Shepard crossed her arms, "Why do you need to spy on me?"

"It's not like I set the program up, Shepard," Liara replied, putting her delicate, blue hands on her hips. "The Shadow Broker already had systems following your extranet ID and intercepting your messages. I don't even read them anymore, to be honest. You're very boring."

"Thanks," Shepard growled.

"I just mean in comparison to asari state secrets and top clearance STG reports. Do you know there's a sapient race on the edge of asari space being considered for first contact? They live in symbiotic tri-gendered social groups from adolescence, very interesting. Of course, I'll ensure the proposal is shot down until my new legislation concerning mining company limitations is passed. There are mountains that are basically pure element zero on their home planet," Liara shook herself, reigning in her compulsion to chat about the various ways she was manipulating high-level government dealings every day before breakfast.

"In any case, I keep an eye on you so I can make sure I catch any mistakes you might make, not because I'm interested in your literary downloads. Hemingway is awful by the way."

"Take that back."

"Never."

Shepard sighed, dropping her arms back to her sides, "Ok. Sorry I got mad, I just... I don't know. I'm constantly being scrutinized by everyone, and they're all just itching for me to fall flat on my face so they can point and laugh," Shepard rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. "I don't mind if you spy on me."

"I'm not waiting for you to fall on your face," Liara assured her, "I'm trying to prevent it."

"I know, I know, read my boring messages to your heart's content. I'll check my grammar more closely now that I know you're watching."

"It couldn't hurt."

They smiled at each other.

Shepard's omni-tool dinged to signal the arrival of the shuttle and she sighed, stretching as she ran her fingers through her stiff silver curls."Thanks for the information, Liara. I'll visit soon."

"You'd better. And bring the drell with you next time you come, I want to meet him," Liara's large blue eyes were absolutely devilish as Shepard bristled and shot the asari a narrow, suspicious look.

"I haven't written any messages about that."

"I know, but what kind of information broker would I be if I gave away all my secrets? Suffice it to say, I know. And I want to meet him." Liara hesitated and put a hand hesitantly on Shepard's elbow, "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, it's just... well... it's complicated." Shepard tried to say more, but the words stuck in her throat, a sticky weight that defeated any attempt she made to spit them out. Talking about anything as pedestrian as her feelings was not something she was prepared to do. She might not even be capable of it anymore.

"I see. Well, I hope it works out for you," Liara replied, obviously unhappy with the quality of information she had gathered. She had been expecting a very different reaction.

Shepard struggled for a moment. She wanted to say more, to confide, to seek a little bit of comfort and understanding. In the end, she just sighed.

"Bye Liara."

"Goodbye Shepard."

The dank hallways that led to the shuttle bay dripped cold water and smelled of rust and ozone. Huge energy coils flanked the narrow walkways, buzzing with the captured lightning that powered Liara's enormous ship on its constant glide through the sunset storms. Shepard wondered how much it cost to keep a place like this up and runnings a troop of fresh recruits sheathed in identical suits of white armour marched past, pretending she was not there. If they were ever questioned, not one of them would admit to having seen her here. She was like a ghost.

"Commander!"

Shepard glanced over her shoulder to find Liara's drell friend, Feron, dodging around the troop of soldiers. They offered him a crisp salute before continuing on their way. He wagged his hand in their direction, never breaking stride.

"You can probably just call me Shepard," She said when he had caught up to her. "Any friend of Liara's is a friend of mine."

"Sure. I just wanted to thank you for... well, for saving my life. Liara said she couldn't have done it without you." Feron was shorter than Shepard by about two inches, his broad scaled face the colour of water under a summer sky. "Can I walk you to the shuttle bay?"

"Um. Sure." Shepard slowed her usually brisk pace to match his, watching the play of flickering white light on his blue scales. He was... very pretty. The drell were a beautiful race, Shepard decided, her attraction to Thane was just a reaction to that.

"How are you doing?" She asked.

"As well as can be expected," Feron was favouring his left leg and protectively crooked the matching arm close to his body. "Liara took me to a doctor who said the only thing I need now is time." His eyes were large, dark and haunted the way that Thane's got when he was recalling an unpleasant memory. After a moment he snapped out of it, "My people react to intense experiences more strongly. I suppose that's probably because our eidetic memories make it hard to separate the past from the present."

"Yeah, Lorath Atheta has a poem about that. 'Speak to me not of Flowers'." Shepard said, trying to edge the conversation away from its current vein.

"I remember it," Feron replied, his eyes growing distant and glassy again, "She was born on Rakhana, you know."

"Yeah, I just finished 'the Two Horizons'." The door to the shuttle bay materialized in front of her, a blessed saviour from this increasingly awkward conversation. Feron seemed surprised by her literary knowledge, and stopped suddenly in the middle of the hallway.

"Look, I wanted to ask you something - about Liara," Feron cupped his hands in front of him, lacing his fingers together and glancing down the hallway, as though Liara was about to spring out from under the cat walk with a dramatic 'ah ha'. She was probably listening to them, through some remote hack in their omni-tools or bugs hidden in the ceiling. But a personal message would have been just as easily intercepted, so there was really nowhere he could have any real privacy.

"She likes denel flowers and red wine, not white," Shepard replied. "As far as music goes, stick with the most sugary and popular asari singers. She'll be embarrassed to admit it, but she loves that crap. She hates prose, so don't bother with poetry or anything like that. Get her science and anthropology books if you feel like giving gifts, no jewellery or perfume. She's allergic to perfume."

Feron blinked at her for a minute, committing all of that to memory. No chance of Liara's network tunnelling into that.

An eidetic memory might be a burden, but Shepard could also see ways that it would be damn useful.

"Thanks," He said finally. He looked bashful under his drell stoicism. "She says she doesn't want to take advantage of me but I... I guess I really want to be taken advantage of."

"I hope you get what you want," Shepard clapped him on his unwounded shoulder in what she hoped was a friendly and encouraging fashion, "You both deserve to be ridiculously happy."

The shuttle bay door slid open and she threw Feron a wave over her shoulder as she strode toward it. He returned it enthusiastically and headed back up the dank hallways of the monstrous ship. Shepard sighed, rubbing the back of her neck as she headed to the patiently purring Kodiak across the hangar.

A flood of relief passed through Shepard when she found herself back in the clean, industrial light of the Normandy. She had spent more of her life on board Alliance-class star ships then she had on land by this point in her life, and the Normandy's sleek military lighting and clean metallic odour was comforting. This was home more than anywhere else in the galaxy.

"EDI, set a course for the planet Zetzen, Paragos system," Shepard ordered as she headed for the stairs, "It's time for us to get to work."

"Very good, Commander." EDI intoned from the ceiling.

"I'll be uploading the information Liara provided about the Blue Suns in a moment," Shepard paused, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she cycled through unpleasant thoughts. "Please scrub the files before copying them into the database. I want any invasive programs that might be hidden in them deleted. If you have a minute, you could do the same for our existing networks."

She might not be able to stop Liara from spying on her, but she was going to give it a go anyway. It would not do to make the Shadow Broker's job too easy.

"Of course. I will send a summary of my findings to your private terminal."

"Scrub that too, while you're cleaning house."

_'You're not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you_._'_ Strangely, that did not make her feel better. The thought put a bitter taste in Shepard's mouth as she headed for the crew deck, fiddling with the uploaded data on her omni-tool. Planets, systems, garrisons, troop numbers, sale and product margins. The Blue Suns were bigger and more entrenched in the Terminus Systems then she ever would have believed. She felt a flicker of doubt as she considered the magnitude of the task she had set, but pushed it away. She did not have room in her life for doubt. She needed to distract herself.

Shepard ate a lunch that tasted like nothing to her, while making bland small talk with a few members of the crew. She went back up to her quarters and poked idly at the console on her desk for a while, but there was not any work that needed to be done. She took a shower and brushed her teeth, resisting the urge to examine all her imperfections in the mirror. Finally, unable to think of anything else to do she went to Kasumi's room and returned a volume of Chinese mystery novels she had borrowed a few months ago, only half of them read.

"There you are." The thief grinned from her seat by the window, legs curled up against her chin. "Did you like Judge Dee?"

Shepard gave her a distinctly unimpressed look and the thief sighed dramatically, throwing her hands up in the air.

"I give up. Your tastes are too intellectual for my meagre collection." She took her book back and tossed it onto her bed among a cluster of papers scrawled with little haiku poems. "Tell me what's new."

"Not much," Shepard leaned back and spread one arm across the back of the couch. She thought about getting a drink from the bar, but instead crossed her legs and stared out through the open shutters, watching the stars zip past. "We'll be arriving at Zetzen in a little while and then we're going to start becoming infamous."

"I've avoided that for years," Kasumi said quietly, "It's funny that my name is going to go down as a revolutionary rather than as a thief."

"Life is full of surprises."

"Don't I know it. I wasn't talking about work though. What about your social life?"

Shepard glanced at the other woman suspiciously, and caught a mischievous flash of teeth before she feigned nonchalance. Her scalp prickled in and she shifted in her seat. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I heard some interesting things from Garrus about a certain sparring match you and our illustrious drell assassin were involved with the other day," Kasumi replied, her voice coy. "Something about how Thane had to drag you to the med bay when you started tripping balls?"

"Garrus is a fucking liar," Shepard replied, minute hairs standing on end as her instincts told her to escape while she still had a chance.

Kasumi's eyes gleamed from the shadows of her hood, bright as the stars beyond the panoramic windows, "I don't think so. Mordin said something about oral contact with drell causing hallucinations in humans at breakfast this morning. Is he a liar too?"

"If I say yes, will you drop this?"

"Of course not."

"Alright, you've got me," Shepard raised her hands in a gesture of surrender, "God, why is everyone suddenly so interested in where my mouth has been?"

"Your mouth has a habit of getting us into trouble," Kasumi replied, clearly enjoying herself. "It's in our best interests to keep track of it."

"Ha ha, it is to laugh," Shepard crossed her arms over her chest, "Maybe you can go down in history as a bad comedian."

"Ouch. I'd be hurt if I wasn't so much more interested in milking you for all the juicy details. What was it like?" The thief leaned forward hungrily.

"What was what like?" Shepard asked, snapping her hands back to her sides as they started wandering towards each other, her cuticles itching. Her fingers were beginning to scab, the flesh red and swollen from her continuous neurosis.

"Everything! The fighting, the kissing, the hallucinations, I've heard those are really something else," Kasumi grinned, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin on them as her eyes sparkled expectantly.

"The fight was embarrassing," Shepard grumbled, remembering the effortless way Thane had twisted his way around her most vigorous attacks and manipulated her body with the slightest application of force in return. The memory of his strong, rough hands against her made her skin prickle. "The kissing was... nice. He... well he's good at."

Kasumi giggled in a way that made Shepard smile. It was so rare for any of them to get a chance to be normal. The thief gestured for her to continue.

"He tasted really good," Shepard admitted, "Sweet, but hot too. It was like he'd been sucking on lemon candy and pepper, but... not. I don't know. Different. But good." She realized she was rambling, but if Kasumi's frantic giggling was any indication she did not mind at all. "The hallucinations were a little bit intense."

"I'll bet. Like Alice in Wonderland intense?"

"No, they weren't that weird. It was more like breathing walls, melting colours, and the strangest sound and sensation combinations. I could, like, taste the lights and hear the colours."

"Synaesthesia," Kasumi supplied.

"Sure," Shepard was not entirely sure what that meant, but she went with it, "Anyway, it wasn't all that bad, just unexpected."

"At least you'll be ready for next time," Kasumi grinned, hugging herself and giggling again, "Oh, it's all so romantic. The two of you have been pussy-footing around it for so long and now you're finally going to-"

"We're not going to do anything," Shepard cut her off, slicing the air with one hand to emphasize her point. The word 'romantic' had drained the colour from her face and shrunk her stomach into a little lump of anxiety. "I'm just going to try to forget it ever happened and with any luck so will he."

"What?" Kasumi looked crestfallen, "Why?"

"Because it's a mistake," Shepard insisted, running her fingers through her hair and taking a few deep, even breaths, "We shouldn't be complicating things now. With the Blue Suns, and the Reapers, and the Council... it's all too messed up already. Add in some serious baggage, and we've got a recipe for disaster."

"Is it because he's sick?" Kasumi asked quietly.

"No," Shepard replied, shocked. "Of course not. It's me. I'm not... I can't..." She struggled, her tongue as heavy and awkward as a stone slab as she fought with the complicated emotions welling up, "I've never really..."

"Shep," Kasumi sounded shocked, "Are you a virgin?"

"What?" That was enough to make Shepard laugh, despite the nature of their conversation just moments before. "Oh god, no way. I've fucked a lot in my life."

She paused as she realized what she had just said and blushed.

"That came out wrong. But whatever, I went to command school when I was sixteen and beer-bonged a bottle of tequila at least once every weekend for four years. That kind of stuff... well I spent my share of time on my back," Shepard blushed again, rubbing the back of her neck.

"That is so awesome," Kasumi grinned, "You're so respectable; I never would have guessed you had such a misspent youth."

"Don't go spreading it around," Shepard warned, "If Jack found out; I'd never hear the end of it. Anyway, maybe that's the thing. I know sex; it's fun and easy and doesn't require a lot of thought. I don't know relationships. That's something I've never done."

Kasumi nodded. Shepard sighed, looking down and realizing that her fingers were picking at each other and leaking blood again. She swore softly and raised them to her mouth, sucking at the ragged wounds.

"Hey, it's always scary the first time," Kasumi said, scooting forward to put a hand on her shoulder, "That doesn't mean you shouldn't go for it. Thane really likes you. He gets the cutest gooey look on his face whenever he talks about you; it's enough to make me wish we could switch places sometimes."

"I thought you had a thing for Jacob?" Shepard replied, one of her eyebrows arching as she felt a completely unreasonable stab of jealousy pass through her. She clamped down on it and shoved it firmly away. She would have to have a stern lecture with herself later.

"Oh, Thane's not my type," Kasumi said airily as though she had read Shepard's thoughts, "But Jacob doesn't look at me the way Thane looks at you when he thinks no one is watching."

"Look, it's not like I don't want to. I do. But I can't."

"Why not?"

"I just can't. It's like I'm not capable of it, of feeling that kind of thing, of letting my guard down, even talking about it is... god. It's hard." Shepard's stomach felt like it was writhing, folding over itself and twisting into knots. It took super human effort just to force her tiny, ineffectual confession out; it was almost enough to cause physical pain. She forced herself to laugh, just to break the tension created by Kasumi's blank stare. "Thane is probably better at expressing his emotions than I'll ever be. That should tell you just how... damaged I am."

"That's unfortunate," Kasumi sat back, curling her arms around her legs, "Is that... because of Mindoir?"

The question was timid, born of concern rather than nosiness, but Shepard shot to her feet as if she had been electrocuted. She could force a few vague answers out, but she could not talk about Mindoir.

"Sorry!" Kasumi said immediately, raising her hands as a look of pure panic spread across her face, "I shouldn't have asked, sorry, sorry."

"It's fine," Shepard replied, a little too curtly. Kasumi fell silent, looking up at her with large, bewildered eyes. Shepard could feel her fists clenching and unclenching as she fought to control her emotions. "I should go though. We'll be coming up on the relay soon, and I want to get on the ground as soon as I can after the jump."

"Yeah. Well. If you want to talk or anything..." Kasumi said cautiously.

Shepard forced a smile that looked more or less genuine, "Don't worry about it. I'll be back with some real books for you." Shepard turned on her heel and strode out of the room with as much serenity as she could muster. Her muscles seemed to be made of wood, and her gait was sharp and jerky.

In the hallway, Shepard leaned against the wall, pressing her forehead against the cold steel to take a couple deep, calming breaths. Mindoir. Twenty years later, even the name had enough power to rob her of her senses, to make the narrow hallways and bright artificial light claustrophobic and alien. With her eyes closed and the conversations in the mess hall little more than a murmur, she could almost hear the tolling of the bells, smell spice and cut grass in the air-

"Shepard?"

Shepard's head snapped up from the wall, reverie broken. Thane stood at the door to the men's room, his expression a mixture of concern and nerves. After a moment he stepped into the hallway and the door slid silently closed behind him. Shepard rubbed at her forehead, and forced her emotions back down, under the surface.

"Thane."

"I hope you're feeling better," He said with care, "And that I might be able to speak with you."

"Ah..." Shepard's mind turned over with all the speed of a frozen engine, stalling and sputtering as she tried to find an escape route. Faint, punch him in the throat, blast the nearest vent cover off with her biotics, and escape into the walls of the ship - none of them were practical really.

"Commander, we are approaching the relay that will take us to Paragos system."

Shepard smiled at Thane and shrugged her shoulders helplessly at EDI's intervention. He did not look like he was going to just give up, but he inclined his head to her and allowed her to side step around him. The gesture brought them so close that she could smell the spice on his breath, citrus and cayenne, and it made her feel weak in the knees.

_God Shepard, get your boner under control. _She raged once she had been enclosed in the relative safety of the elevator, her breath coming a little too hard and heavy for comfort. The familiar, not entirely unpleasant ache had started up in the pit of her stomach again, spreading pulses of warmth to lower places every time she thought of Thane's agile tongue curling around hers or the feeling of his hands in her hair. She shook herself and bit down on her lip until she tasted blood. _If you're going to go back to being 'just friends' you can't keep thinking about jumping his bones._

Shepard was still thinking about it though, even as she strapped her guns and armour in place and selected the Arc Projector from the neat row of heavy weapons.

"Miranda, Zaeed, I need you in armour and ready to go in the hangar bay by the time I get down there," Shepard ordered as the doors swished open, and she headed to the cockpit to discuss approach trajectory with Joker as Zetzen appeared, pale blue against the white corona of the energetic sun Paragos.

Miranda and Zaeed were waiting as instructed when she arrived in the shuttle bay, helmet under one arm. Miranda sat on the hood of the Hammerhead, meticulously checking the joints of her M6. She had a smile for Shepard. Zaeed had his rifle out, but he was just leaning against it casually and smoking a cigarette. He nodded and stubbed out his smoke as Joker told them to strap in and get ready for deployment. The silence remained as the Hammerhead tipped out of the belly of the ship and began to fall. EDI took control and piloted the vehicle through the lower atmosphere toward the rapidly coalescing shape of the mercenary hideout.

The Zetzen facility had been a temporary Alliance science station when it was assembled. The windowless labs formed the heart of the station, surrounded by a patchwork of prefab rooms connected by hallways of industrial plastic stretched over thin steel poles like the skeletons of giant snakes. The Hammerhead touched down a mile out and Shepard took over the controls, guiding the vehicle through a dense network of aquamarine sandstone valleys.

Shepard took the turns tight and fast, Miranda's fingers going white on the dashboard. She threw the commander a rueful look, and Shepard laughed and gunned the acceleration. Sprawled across the back seat with his gun in his lap, Zaeed blandly watched the valley walls speed past. He had not even bothered with the safety harness.

"Just relax, Lawson," Shepard said, "I'm an excellent driver."

"I'm sure you are," Miranda replied, her voice a little raspy. She adjusted the seatbelts and clenched her hands together on her lap. Her blue eyes widened, fixed straight ahead as Shepard applied the brake and shot the Hammerhead around a ninety-degree corner, the butt of the vehicle whipping around as she pounded the accelerator. Zaeed's harness clicked together in the back seat. Shepard just laughed again.

Driving was almost as good as fighting.

Movement was the key. When the world flashed by her too quickly for her mechanical eyes to focus, Shepard felt like her old self, cocksure and full of her own greatness. The whir of machinery under her seat, the weight of a gun in her hand, the ache in her back from running with fifty kilograms of armour and weaponry, these things were familiar in a way that nothing else was.

Shepard thumbed the trigger of the main gun as the facility door materialized around the next bend, and the Hammerhead jerked as it spat a swarm of smoking missiles at the guard turrets. By the time she braked and ground the vehicle into a pinpoint stop, the gun turrets were three piles of sullen, half-melted steel, and she was already high on the sweet, hard adrenaline of battle.

Shepard vaulted out of the Hammerhead, pulling her helmet on and clamping the seal. Miranda lurched out after her and stood with her eyes closed and her hands on her knees for a long moment, reacclimatizing to the solid safety of stone beneath her feet.

"You're a goddamn adrenaline junky, Shepard," Zaeed growled as he hauled out of the car and shook himself. The merc looked a little paler than usual.

"You love it," she said, still grinning under the visor of her helmet.

They drew weapons and approached the ragged hole. Blasted off by a stray missile, the door laid on the floor beyond, dented and marked with star-bursts of black ash. She was still grinning when the first wave of Blue Suns rounded the corner and opened fire. Shepard felt her biotics flare, and she charged into the fray, slamming mercs aside and unloading incendiary ammo that burst against chest plates and consumed them in sheets of red flame.

There was something horrifically beautiful about combat. Shepard imagined that was a little psychotic - that there should be nothing to love in the screams and charred-flesh reek of the dying. But she loved it so passionately that she did not care what that said about her. Fighting made sense. When she was running, shooting, killing, the entire galaxy crystallized and aligned itself before her. Her opponents were clearly defined and quickly eliminated. She was focused, and her control was complete, unflinching.

"Massani, left flank. Lawson, take my right," Shepard ordered, as a burst of biotic energy tossed their last shrieking adversary back against a wall, smashing bones to pulp. He slid to the floor and laid still, smouldering as blood leaked from the cracks in his armour and spread across the floor in a turgid pool. They moved forward to the next engagement, and the next, and Shepard lost herself in battle, in the kick of the gun against her hand, and the precise science of ducking and shooting. They made their way through an indistinct number of sterilized rooms and narrow plastic-wrapped hallways, until they emerged into the main lab and its glistening array of equipment.

"EDI, have you hacked into their systems yet?" Shepard asked, as she circled a complex network of bubbling beakers and arching, dripping tubes. The air was heavy with a sterilized, chemical smell. She should have brought Mordin, he would have been able to tell her what was going on here in a matter of moments.

"Of course, Shepard," EDI answered, "Their encryption was sophisticated for mercenaries, but not for me."

"What are they doing here?" Shepard asked, picking up a sheet of notes covered in complex chemical equations. It made no sense to her and she dropped it back on the table after a moment.

"This is a refining plant," EDI informed her placidly, "They are making red sand."

Shepard looked around the lab, dozens of tables covered in complicated apparatus', ceramic burners and steaming test tube racks. She found something covered by a white sheet in one corner and tugged it away, exposing a pile of familiar plastic-wrapped bricks as tall as she was. She could not help but whistle, a sound mingled with disgust at the sight of so many drugs and a grudging respect for the efficiency with which they conducted their business.

"They've been busy. Who are they shipping to?" Shepard asked, hefting a brick to get a feel for the weight. She dropped it and glanced at the pile. Over seven hundred kilo's, maybe more than a thousand.

"Various ports situated along the borders of Alliance space. Where it goes after that, I can't be certain." The AI replied after a moment of consultation with her hacked databases. "They are supplying at least five percent of the estimated red sand traffic among human planets, maybe more."

Shepard whistled, impressed despite herself. Someone was going to be very unhappy by the time she went to bed tonight. She tapped at her omni-tool, switching the radio channels.

"Garrus?"

"I hear you Shepard."

"I need you to get your team and load up the Kodiak with some of the ordinance packages in the shuttle bay. Six or seven kilos should do it." Shepard took a step back, studying the layout of the labs. The server room would be to the west. They hadn't reached there yet; any remaining mercs would be bunkered down with their computers and lab technicians. "We're going to blow this place off the map."

"Sounds good. We'll be down within the hour," Garrus said. "Try to save some mercs for me, huh?"

"No promises, but I'll bring you along on our next drop."

"You better."

The line went dead a moment later. Everyone was getting antsy. Sedentary life did not suit warriors.

"Let's move out." Shepard gestured to Miranda and Zaeed, and the two of them resumed their ancillary positions. By the time Garrus radioed to report touchdown, they were wading through blood in the last server room, Shepard hacking terminals as Miranda smeared a glob of medigel on Zaeed's bleeding forehead. A piece of armour dislodged by a heavy warp blast had clipped him. It was their only injury.

"Communications records have revealed the locations of several previously unknown outposts in the surrounding systems, Shepard." EDI informed her as the last upload finished. "A thrust through these planets will severely hamper the Blue Suns drug market among Alliance worlds."

"Just what I like to hear," Shepard grinned. The success of their first attack was carrying over the high of battle, staving off the inevitable return of disorder and unhappiness. Even Zaeed was looking perky, smirking at the idea of hamstringing Vido's finances. "We'll set the charges and head out. Adjust current movement patterns for the most efficient elimination of new targets."

"Very good, Commander." EDI signed off the radio and Shepard switched back to ground team channels.

The lab was already studded with explosive charges, blinking red lights littered among the jungle of plastic tubes and glass. Shepard pointed Garrus toward the server rooms and he strode off with an armful of ordinance packages as she went through the ready-placed charges setting their timers to five minutes each. The monotony of the work filled the waning adrenaline charge and she realized she was hungry and tired. Her back ached fiercely and the bruises Thane had given her made every limb heavy and painful.

Shepard glanced over at Thane, who was setting the timers on charges across the lab. He looked up and their eyes met briefly, coaxing heat to the surface of her skin. She tried to hide her blush as Garrus reappeared and told her the charges had been placed and programmed.

The group trudged out and piled into their respective vehicles. Miranda was visibly relieved when EDI took control of the Hammerhead and began the ascent. Shepard yawned and put her feet up on the dashboard as she tapped at her omni-tool and began the countdown. They were above the clouds in the lower atmosphere when the explosives detonated, too far away to see the plumes of fire and smoke that followed. EDI provided a satisfying satellite picture of the crater they had left behind.

"Vido is going to piss himself," Zaeed laughed from the back seat, and EDI provided him with a satellite video of the explosion on his omni-tool. The mercenary laughed until the Hammerhead slid back into the safety of the shuttle bay.

"Not too bad, as far as first strikes go," Shepard mused as she climbed out of the vehicle, "Let's hope our luck holds out."

"We'll need all the luck we can get," Miranda said as they headed for the stairs. "But you're right, it was very successful. We have enough credits to keep the Normandy going for a few months at least. As long as there isn't any crisis, you know, like angry mercs attacking us."

Shepard shrugged. "No gain without risk."

"Next contact ETA sixteen hours and seven minutes," Joker informed them. "Another red sand plant."

Shepard grinned over her shoulder at Garrus, "See, you'll get all the mercs you can shoot."

He laughed, and they piled into the elevator together.


	5. No Mercy

_She opened her eyes and she found herself armoured and lost in a sea of blood-splattered purple stone. She twisted, looking left and right. Her heart hammered in the back of her throat and she realized where she was with a thrill of terror and nausea. The violet spires of Torfan's delicate mountains rose against a frigid, airless horizon and Shepard looked down as someone pulled her to her knees in a pool of stinking fluids._

"_Shepard," Commander Dorn whispered, blood running down his chin in rivers, "Do it. Do it."_

_She read somewhere that the brain is not supposed to be able to recreate smells during dreams but she could smell Dorn, the gunmetal and chemical smoke, the heavy reek of bile and blood. He was a handsome man, twenty six, at the beginning of what everyone had assumed was going to be a long, illustrious career. She dreamed of him dying on the ground in a puddle of blood and torn flesh. _

_His legs were twisted into unnatural shapes, connected to the ragged end of his torso by a single pulsing, purplish string of lower intestine. His organs were splattered across the ground around them, a grotesque mosaic of war. His steel-blue eyes, lacquered with agony, slipped in and out of focus but never left her face_

"_Do it, Shepard," Every syllable was a scrape of pain, trembling over his torn lips. No urgency, no desperation, just the order whispered over and over again. There was a gun in her hand, heavy and still warm. "Just do it."_

_She put the mercy bullet through his brain, tucked under the jaw so his mother could give him a mostly open-casket funeral. In her dream the vibrations burst all the delicate vessels in his wide blue eyes. They turned red as they rolled up into his skull and his hand around hers went limp. _

Shepard woke in her bed, sweating and shaking. Slowly, she unclenched her fist, blood rushing to the whitened knuckles with enough force to cause pain. She hauled herself up into a sitting position and pressed the heels of her hands over her closed eyes, pressing down until they ached and bright star-bursts of white light exploded across her darkened vision. His dying command whispered across her memory, half drowned in his cooling blood.

"Shepard?" EDI repeated. "May I be of assistance?"

"No," Shepard replied, wiping sweat-soaked curls away from her forehead, "What is it?"

"We are approaching Illio. Estimated time of arrival is sixteen minutes."

"Good, tell Garrus and Thane I need them ready to go in ten minutes. They can meet me in the hangar bay."

"Understood."

Shepard swung her legs over the side of the bed and forced herself up on watery knees. She did not bother with her jumpsuit, just slid her feet into her unlaced boots and headed for her door. It had been six weeks since their first attack on Zetzen. Illio would be the thirtieth outpost they destroyed, a sprawling colony world that had been appropriated through slaughter and turned over the cultivation of component plants for a complex narcotic chemical compound. The street name was snake.

Shepard was painfully familiar with snake. It was a crystallized, lime green powder most often mixed with spit or water and injected into the vein. A single hit wraps the user in a haze, a warm entity winding its way around the brainstem, suffocating everything but a pervading glow of clammy ecstasy. Not as flashy and high-class as red sand, but far more common place and far cheaper to mass produce, popular on piss poor backwater planets like Yugurtz.

She tried to feel confident, accomplished, or at least proud of what they had done so far. Alliance sources reported a massive drop in drug and illegal tech traffic across the Terminus Border, entire planets going dry as the criminal underworld seethed and panicked. Criminals got nasty when they were backed into a corner, and law enforcement was having a tough time handling them.

"It's what they get fucking paid for," Jack had snarled when Shepard got quiet at the news.

She was right of course. But when the extranet stories of bloody planetside gang wars started coming in, that did not seem to matter very much.

Jacob was spraying a coating of quick-drying sealant over the new paint coat on Shepard's armour when she arrived at his station a few minutes later. She had been hit in the chest with a chemical grenade on their last raid, and while it had not done much damage to the steel, the charcoal grey paint had been scorched and melted by the phosphorous detonation.

Shepard stepped up to the table as Jacob pulled the safety goggles off and faced her, an apologetic look in place.

"I know what you're going to say-"

"It's white." Shepard interrupted, staring down at the carefully arranged plates of her suit. They were completely white, without so much as a coloured trim to break the snowy, polished finish.

"That's the primer. I used a new kind that didn't dry as quickly and I didn't have time to put the paint on. I can do that when you come back." He said. Shepard looked up at him and then down at her suit.

"It's white," She said again, rubbing her forehead and picking up one of the arm plates. The primer shimmered like a glacier in the overhead lighting.

"Just for today."

Shepard sighed. She supposed, if she was being reasonable, that it should not matter what colour her armour was. White might make her easier to see on the battlefield, but since her combat style usually involved screaming and charging into the thickest point of enemy contact that did not really matter much.

Still, she could not disguise the unhappy twist of her lips as she pulled out her under layer and kicked out of her cotton sleep shorts. She was a creature of habit whether that was a good thing or not.

"Sorry," He said as she slid her arms into the chest plate and resettled it until the weight sat just right.

"Just get me my Arc Projector," She replied.

"Scans show the beginnings of extensive defence turrets," EDI reported as the elevator door slid open on the engineering deck, "But the guns are not yet operational."

"How fortunate. For us, I mean," Thane said, appearing at her elbow as she headed for the narrow stairs that led down to the shuttle bay.

Shepard reared back, lurching into the wall with a clang. Growling, she did a quick double take up and down the hall.

"How do you do that?"

"Years of practise," Thane smiled, a hint of amusement touching his otherwise troubled eyes, "I was hoping I could speak to you."

"Now?" She asked, heading toward the staircase, "Now's not exactly the ideal time."

"It never is," He replied, a tremor of reproach breeching his normally faultless self control. Shepard stopped and turned to face him in the hallway. She had been avoiding this for too long, and it was driving a wedge between them, that could threaten the integrity of the team.

"Yeah, okay. Can I start by apologizing?"

He nodded.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have avoided this for as long as I have," Shepard bit her lip, running her fingers through her hair as she struggled to organize her disjointed thoughts and paranoia into a lucid sentence. "But I'm going to have to avoid it a few hours longer. I promise we'll talk about this the moment we return from the planet's surface."

Thane hesitated for a moment before inclining his chin a few degrees in a nod. The determined look in his eyes did not falter, though. There was no way for her to get out of this now.

"Commander, though I am sorry to interrupt you, we cannot wait much longer. They may have the guns completed before we manage to touch down," EDI's cool, efficient report cut the heat of the moment, forcing Shepard's mind back into business mode. Thane took a step back and held his hand out to her, indicating she should precede him.

"Thank you, EDI. We're heading out now," She mumbled, wondering if there was any way she could have handled that encounter worse than she had. Nothing sprang to mind.

Shepard shrugged her shoulders, resettling the weight of her armour as the door to the hangar bay slid open. Her mind was a restless mess. She gritted her teeth as she reached the bottom of the stairs, clamped down on that buzzing white noise and pushed it away. She needed the sublime clarity of a warrior at the moment, not the conflicted whining of a love-struck girl.

"Where were you two?" Garrus asked as they appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his blue eyes flickering between the two of them.

Shepard shot him a warning look and he smirked as they climbed into the Hammerhead. She would be facing an interrogation later; she could read that in the curious twitching of his mandibles. Thane silently climbed in behind her as though everything were fine.

Shepard was not entirely sure it was fine. But as the Hammerhead tipped out of the Normandy and began its slow descent toward the planet below, she lost herself in the surge and ebb of the thrusters, the columns of data shooting up and down the screens, and the colony lay-out that EDI had provided for them to study.

"Are you ready?" She asked.

Both of them nodded.

"Good. You might want to put your seat belts on," She said as the Hammerhead entered the lower atmosphere, and the colony resolved itself into lucid, identifiable details.

"You don't have to tell me twice," Garrus grumbled, fiddling with the straps until he had them in the proper configuration for his alien anatomy. Thane's harness clicked together behind her.

She directed EDI to set them down on the perimeter, from which they could systematically eliminate outlying garrisons and destroy the partially completed towers. Scorched earth was the best description of her attack plans. By the time she was done with this place it would be completely unsalvageable. With any luck, Vido Santiago was going to be having convulsions by the end of the day.

The Hammerhead shuddered as it slammed onto the planet's surface and Shepard pounded on the accelerator immediately. The vehicle shot forward with a sickening lurch that made Garrus moan.

"You're always reminiscing about old times," She said, looking away from the road for a moment and raising an eyebrow at him, "What's more like the good old days than zooming across hostile terrain in a high powered metal box, shooting missiles at bad guys?"

"Exactly like old times," Garrus confirmed, "complete with motion sickness and the promise of imminent fiery death."

"Pansy."

He called her something that her chip could not translate and she laughed, gunning the accelerator until the fields flashed around them, the neat rows of vibrant green plants melting into a single toxic smear. Thane made a nervous noise in the back seat, and Shepard glanced over her shoulder to see that he was trying to look casual as he clutched the door rails.

The first tower appeared, swarming with Blue Suns engineers who looked up from their work as the Hammerhead turned a sharp corner around the tall walls of narcotic plants. Shepard thumbed the trigger.

One of them managed to get off an incineration burst that she dodged by jamming down the brake, yanking hard on the throttle stick and banking the Hammerhead so sharply that its leaning side ground against the road. It threw showers of sparks and Shepard slammed both throttles forward. The flaming tech flew past where they had just been and burst at the edge of the field. The crops ignited, tossing columns of greasy smoke into the air at the same moment that the missiles made contact with their target.

The tower shuddered, bright spurts of orange fire erupting, super heated chemical compounds catching steel and burning with columns of incandescent blue flames. The steel supports buckled and folded, the entire structure collapsing and blocking the access road, spilling screaming engineers in every direction.

Shepard pulled the Hammerhead off the road into the fields, the whirring engines throwing burning green chaff in every direction as she mowed down rows of plants. She ran over a twitching engineer and threw a cursory glance at the back-facing monitor. The spreading fire was the only movement.

"You," Garrus breathed, "are insane."

"And you follow me around obeying my orders," Shepard replied, "So which of us is really crazy?"

"I'm going to have Mordin run a brain scan. On both of us."

They demolished three more partially completed towers, spraying fire and mercenaries across the fields until they lurched up to the space port. Bundles of harvested plants were piled beside all-terrain vehicles and barrels of cheap fuel. After a moment of thought, Shepard sent one last barrage of missiles at the accumulated cargo. The fuel barrels detonated with enough force to buffet the Hammerhead to the side. Shepard had to wrench the throttle back, and slam it into their sideways momentum until the vehicle screeched to a stop two hundred meters away from its previous location. Fire soared into the sky, a writhing pillar stretching for the clear blue heavens. They took a moment to let the smoke clear and the sizzling air cool before the doors popped open and they piled out.

Garrus looked a little queasy.

"I'm not going to let you drive anymore," He rasped.

"Shut up, you sound like Miranda."

There was no more time for talk. A swarm of heavily armed mercenaries poured out of the decaying ruins of the space port offices, heavy troops lugging grenade launchers and flame throwers as they scurried after screaming Centurions.

Shepard ducked behind the pitted ruins of what had recently been outdated mako-grade tanks, Thane and Garrus tight on her heels. They drew weapons. Bullets filled the acrid, smoky air with the smell of hot lead and blood.

"They're moving to flanking position on the right," Shepard screamed into the radio, "Thane, withdraw to your left." There was no response. "I said withdraw dammit!"

"I'm pinned down," He reported, his voice cool and unconcerned as he emptied a thermal clip from his SMG into an approaching merc. They were coming at him from both sides, while a trio of women with assault rifles laid suppressive fire. Garrus peeked around cover and lifted his omni-tool, targeting a nearby Pyro. The man's fuel tank detonated, spraying the surrounding soldiers with a geyser of burning fuel. One of the women dropped, shrieking and writhing on the ground as the fire ate her alive. The other two slapped desperately at superficial flames, dancing around each other. The momentary distraction was already guttering out, leaving their armour only mildly scorched.

Garrus was busy with his own problems, playing peek-and-shoot with one of the Centurions and his depleted reserve of soldiers. Shepard was out of options, she had to move. She sprinted across the open ground toward Thane's position. Thane was fighting the soldiers coming from the right, his back turned on the left attack.

Shepard felt her biotic charge rippling around her, gaining momentum, wreathing her in a nimbus of dark energy.

Her feet left the ground and a second later she smashed face-first into the fray, her opponents staggering back from the impact. One of them brought his gun up, and she grabbed it by the nozzle and smashed it back into his face. It turned his nose into bloody pulp. He howled and dropped his gun, so she grabbed him around his neck and hauled him in front of her as his friends began firing.

With one hand tucked under his twitching arm, Shepard fired six precise shots, killing two and sending the third a step back as bright blood blossomed under his shoulder pad. She threw her dying shield forward and unleashed a pulsing ball of biotic energy that knocked both of them shrieking head-over-heels in the air.

The women with the assault rifles fired again as Shepard dove for cover. Bullets struck her shield and the blue energy shimmered before vanishing. Three darts of cold pain to sunk into her exposed side before she crashed onto the ground beside Thane, clutching at the sudden explosion of red against her white plates. Her blood soaked fingers fumbled at her omni-tool, and found the correct trigger. Needles pierced her, distributing cooling jets of medigel to ragged bullet wounds. Only two exit wounds. That meant surgery when she got back to the Normandy. Now she was really pissed.

"Are you hurt?" Thane asked roughly, pushing her up into a sitting position as he checked for hostiles.

"Not badly enough," Shepard laughed, spitting blood under the visor of her helmet into the dust. "What's our situation?"

"Two soldiers with assault rifles and a heavy in the back, shooting missiles without any particular skill," He reported.

"Woo. Good job Garrus," Shepard cheered, holstering her pistol and pulling out her shotgun.

"I do my best," Came the self-satisfied reply over the radio.

"Do your best on the heavy. I'll take care of the chicks with rifles," Shepard ordered, slapping the Claymore to activate incendiary rounds. She grinned at Thane. "Cover me, if you think you can handle it."

"You aren't honestly going to-"

The warm blue envelope of a biotic charge encircled her as she surged out of cover and in a flash of dark energy she was gone. She knocked her target clean off her feet. A sniper shot staggered the other one and Shepard levelled her shot gun at the fallen woman's face.

"Don't-" The other woman managed, before the blast spread her face across the ground in a splatter of burning blood.

Shepard raised the barrel and killed the other woman almost lazily, folding her in half with a shot to the stomach. The merc toppled to the ground as the Commander casually side stepped a clumsy missile shot. Two snipers fired and the heavy's helmet crumpled around the impacts like an empty can. The battle field went silent. Thane stood up, holding his rifle around the barrel and shaking his head at her.

"Garrus is right. You are crazy."

"Don't act like it doesn't turn you on," Shepard replied, flashing him a grin full of blood stained teeth. He gave her an unreadable look as Garrus elbowed him in the ribs, grinning behind his mandibles.

_That was bad form. _She thought, turning back to the space port and considering her options. _You're supposed to be discouraging him remember?_

"This is Commander Dal-serah." A rough voice crackled at her feet and Shepard looked down. She set her boot against the chest of the corpse with the intact head, grabbing the woman's helmet with both hands and working it off with a few rough tugs. The radio was cutting in and out, but it had already provided enough information to make her smile.

"Dal-serah?" Garrus asked, sidling up to her as the man on the other end of the radio demanded an update between choppy bursts of white noise. "Isn't he Santiago's second-in-command?"

"He sure is," Shepard grinned, "Oh, Zaeed is going to be pissed that he wasn't here for this. Let's patch into their radio transmissions and get moving."

Shepard had to dial the volume on her radio down as Dal'Serah shrieked orders at what remained of his guard force – he sounded pissed. They were mobilizing at the west encampment. Shepard directed them on a south-west route that would circumvent the obvious attack positions.

"What do you think?" She asked as the building appeared, a rectangle of steel slatted with windows on the upper levels that had once been a warehouse. There was no sign of movement.

"They're going to dig their heels in and make us attack their doors," Garrus replied, his mandibles pulling up against his mouth as the plates above his eyes contracted into a frown. "That's not going to be fun."

"We might be best served by a two-pronged attack," Thane offered, "Front and back doors."

"I was just thinking the same thing," Shepard grinned, switching her radio back to the Normandy's communication channels.

"Miranda."

"Commander," Miranda's voice was crisp and professional.

"Assemble a three-man team and touch down at these co-ordinates. No longer than thirty minutes." Shepard paused, "Bring Zaeed."

"Oh... of course. We'll be there in twenty five minutes."

"Affirmative. EDI, have you found anything that might be useful?" Shepard wondered how much destruction she could wreak in twenty-five minutes. She smiled.

"There is a small space craft docked north from your position," EDI reported, "Considering its engine and hull size, it is probably the vessel used to smuggle the raw plant materials to manufacturing facilities."

"So you're saying we should go blow it up."

"I don't believe that I said that at all."

"Well, shouldn't we?"

"Given your motives here that would be logical," There was a break in the comm, "I am transferring its location to your hard suit computers."

"Thank you, EDI," Shepard checked her navigator and lifted her hand. They traversed the compound, careful to avoid sniper fire from the narrow windows on the top floor. They found the ship slouched on the landing pad, its engine covers off and a few tools scattered around.

"God," Shepard mumbled, taking a long look at the ship and shaking her head, "These guys are just begging for it."

"Quite," Thane agreed from her shoulder.

"Let's back off, fifty meters, and you guys can compete to see who can make the fuel tank explode."

Garrus and Thane turned in the same moment, running for a row of empty shipping crates stacked along the perimeter of the landing pad. They already had their sniper rifles out.

"Hey, Garrus, no armour-piercing rounds. Skill against skill," Shepard called, pointing a stern finger at him.

She pulled herself up, over the crates and settled between them as they lined up their shots.

The ship went up with a truly inspirational detonation, it had apparently been fully fuelled. The chemical engine coolants painted bright stripes of green and pink into the scarlet fire, and burnt with a sweet smell that curled around the acrid stink of charred steel. Garrus cheered as he stowed his gun back, over his shoulder and smirked triumphantly.

"You're both very good at shooting things," Shepard laughed, patting Thane on the shoulder. He gave her a small smile and she dropped her hand, silently cursing herself again. She was not supposed to be encouraging whatever it was that existed between them.

"Commander, we're fifteen minutes out," Miranda's voice crackled over the radio and Shepard flicked her wrist at the two of them and gestured back toward the bunker.

"Roger that. Touch down in cover and advance for a superficial attack on the north door. Keep them busy, we'll strike at the south and penetrate. With any luck, we can grind them out between us." Shepard paused, squinting at the wide blue sky overhead in an effort to pick out the approaching Kodiak.

"Understood. What have you been doing down there anyway? I can see fire from here."

Shepard glanced over her shoulder at the burning fields, a huge wall of black smoke curling into the sky, hundreds of meters high.

"We've been busy."

Garrus looked back and his mandibles twitched, his jagged mouth curling into a grin. He flashed a thumbs up at her and Shepard grinned back, shaking her head as they worked a long circle around the building to the south-facing door.

The mercs had seen their ship go up and Commander Dal'serah was spitting words that made Shepard's ears burn. She switched the radio in her ear from input to output.

"My mother was a saint," She informed him, "The sweetest soul Earth ever produced. So shut your fucking mouth and don't mention her again."

"Shepard! I knew it was you," Solem Dal-serah had a thicker accent then most batarian's she had met, as though he was fighting a thick, phlegmy throat infection. Maybe that was just the anger though. Shepard almost expected to feel his spit flying through the radio at her.

"Damn. So much for all that subtlety," She replied, "Of course it's me. No one else has managed to fuck you this efficiently have they?"

"No one else has dared to try," Dal'serah snarled.

"Yeah, little hint, your threats lose a lot of force when they're screamed over a radio while you hide behind a bunch of two-bit mercs," Shepard replied, grinning at the rumble of his heavy breathing in her ear. "Maybe if you came out here and said that to my face..."

"Fuck you."

"In your dreams."

"You should just give up Shepard," He warned her, his voice dropped and became passably cool as he regained some measure of control. "Just walk away."

"I think that's my line. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the person who's winning gives the person who's losing the option of giving up." Shepard looked over her shoulder at Garrus who made a show of thinking about it and nodded. "Yep, I've confirmed it. So, you should just give up Dal'serah. Just walk away."

"You have no idea who you're fucking with. If you leave now, Vido might just shoot you when he catches you, nice and quick. That's the best you can hope for at this point, so I'd take it if I were you." Despite his attempt to sound in control Dal'serah's accent was thickening, his voice growing thick and awkward with fear.

"Vido couldn't kill me if six guys held me down and he shot me in the face," Shepard replied. She was effortlessly confident, only wishing that she could see his face as that little allusion sunk in. "I'm about as afraid of him as I am of you."

"You should be afraid."

"I'm not. And I brought someone who might want to have a couple words with you."

"Commander, they're assaulting the north door." A gruff female voice cut the banter, and Shepard heard gun shots in the back ground, followed by a shriek cut suddenly short.

"Mobilize on north door!" Dal'serah shouted, "All troops, mobilize on the north door! Dig in and make a stand, there's nowhere to run now!"

"I'll be seeing you soon, Dal'serah," Shepard switched off the radio output. When Dal'serah did not respond she turned, gesturing to her companions. She was grinning wildly.

"I'm glad I'm on your side," Garrus said.

"Good," Shepard replied.

They moved out, sneaking across the cluttered patch of earth toward the door. No alerts announced over the radio, no sign of movement or alarm. Shepard rolled her eyes as they reached the door and pried the cover off the circuit board. A few seconds of fiddling and the door shuddered and jerked open, grinding sluggishly on its runners. The three of them entered the cool, dimly lit hallways.

"Sniper rifles out," Shepard whispered, peeking around the corner to check the hallways before she moved. "I want any hostiles put down before they have a chance to radio warnings to Dal'serah."

With silent nods, they pressed forward through the hallways that had once been offices, until they came to a single door set into a wall that stretched across the entire width of the building. The warehouse floor, Shepard guessed, and from beyond the door the cough of assault rifle fire punctuated by the thud of heavy weapons going off. She glanced over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow at Garrus who nodded and switched out for his assault rifle. She slapped the holopad and the door slid open, a portal into a world of smoke and spraying blood.

"Second team from th-" The captain took his last moments to warn his fellows of the danger and Shepard rewarded his nobility with several bullets as Thane and Garrus surged forward around her. They had killed half a dozen people before the mercs realized where they were coming from.

"Team Two, advance to the door," Shepard ducked into cover, pressing her back against a wall of old corrugated steel packing containers. "Let's turn this warehouse into a meat grinder."

"Affirmative," Miranda replied.

"Hell yeah!" Zaeed shouted. Shepard could hear the same love of battle that was pounding through her veins in his voice, intoxication more complete than alcohol or drugs could ever hope to provide.

Biotics folded around her as Shepard leaned around the corner, tossing balls of dark energy among the heavy troops to her left as they tried to decide which way to fire. She could see a blossom of red flame erupt at the door, an incendiary grenade that burst to life and turned a man into a curled lump of charcoal.

Thane was at her side as Shepard moved forward, trusting him to cover her back as she pulled up her biotic charge. She streaked across the battlefield and smashed into the squad of remaining heavies, unleashing destruction in every direction as sniper shots snapped into heads and hearts. Wounded and flailing soldiers at her feet toppled to her feet and others flew back, fire wreathed around gaping shotgun wounds_._

Orders were being shouted over the merc's radio from six different directions, smashing into each other and sowing panic among the dwindling troops. None of them could tell which way to shoot, and balls of dark energy tore through the air, spraying the air with blood and bile.

Shepard was lost in it, senseless of any world that might exist beyond the current moment. She ran, every muscle singing as hot blood pounded in her ears. She dashed across the battle field and biotics built around her, building momentum until her boots left the ground and she slammed into a nest of fumbling engineers, as Garrus eliminated their shields with a burst from his omni-tool. Thane was right on her heels, covering her back as she blew holes in the disoriented techs. The thermal clip glowed scarlet and the gun clicked emptily. One of the engineers smiled triumphantly as he lifted an SMG.

Shepard smashed the butt of her gun into his face with all her strength, and glass that was supposed to be resistant to missile fire shattered to bits under the blow. She felt his nose collapse, folding suddenly flat against his skull.

The man choked and reared back, his legs shooting out from under him as he clamped both hands down over his ruined face. He made a wet sobbing noise as his heels beat a frantic rhythm against the steel floor.

Shepard turned and grabbed the next gun, locking it against her chest and smashing her empty weapon against the padding that covered the inside of the wielders elbow joint. The joint did not break, but the nerves seized and the engineer dropped the gun. Dragging him forward by his useless limb, Shepard elbowed him in the mouth, teeth snapping against the steel plates covering her forearms.

She was well covered from what remained of the mercenary force while she put the two suffering men out of their misery.

"Dal'serah's not here," She said into the radio after scanning the remaining Blue Suns.

"He must be on the upper levels. Probably sealed in a one-door room with his guards, or attempting to sneak out the back while we are occupied here," Thane appeared beside her, one leather sleeve burnt up to the elbow. Shepard glanced over at Garrus, who was laying down suppressive fire on six mercs at once, as Miranda's pushed through the opposite doors.

"Garrus, maintain your position, we're going after Dal'serah. Follow us when you're done here."

"Got it."

Shepard and Thane ducked behind cover and took off, heading toward their original entry point. They headed toward the stairs, boots pounding the perforated steel as they climbed toward the third floor. No sign of escape attempts. Dal'serah had apparently found the guts to make a last stand. Shepard had to respect that much of him, at least.

Shepard held up a hand as they reached the topmost landing and Thane slowed, SMG in hand as they crept forward and slapped the holopad on the single door. It slid open and Shepard listened for a moment. Silence. She gestured forward and they crept through, scanning the dimly lit room for movement. Storage bins stacked hazardously about in disorganized clusters, trash and dirt pooling around them on the floor. Shepard squinted and directed Thane toward an advantageous sniper position with a few jerks of her wrist. He disengaged and melted into the shadows, a flicker in the corner of her eye as he scaled the crude steel piles and found a position.

"Dal'serah is cloistered in the foreman's office," Thane said, his voice a gravelly purr in her ear, cool and calm as glacial water, "Should I eliminate him?"

"Hold fire. What's he doing?" Shepard asked, locating the door to the foreman's office after a few seconds of squinting.

"He's using a communications terminal. He appears to be shouting. Arm waving."

"Keep him in your crosshairs. I'm going to take a look," Shepard crept forward, a ghostly smear of white in the dim light. Dal'serah's guards were smoking and pacing nervously in front of the wide windows that faced the warehouse floor and they did not see her as she wound her way toward the door.

"When I open the door, I want you to open fire on Dal'serah's guards. Leave Dal'serah, I want to have a little talk with him. He's going to want to do me a favour."

"Understood."

Shepard hit the holopad and stepped into the office as the first rifle crack rang through the room and the wall of heavy glass windows shattered. A few fingers of glass splintered against Shepard's kinetic barriers as she ducked into cover. The two men standing beside the window were not so lucky. One went down in a hail of broken glass, his exposed neck and face scored with deep, gushing cuts. The other slumped to the floor with Thane's bullet in his brain.

The second shot rang out while the guards were still struggling to get a handle on their situation. As they turned to look for the sniper, Shepard stepped forward, levelling her shotgun at the woman closest to her. Two shots rang out, a load of buckshot tearing the woman back as her head snapped sideways from the impact of a high-powered sniper bullet piercing her helmeted head. The body jerked back and fell at the feet of the last guard, who shot at Shepard, once, twice, until her shields were flickering dangerously low, and then quickly suffered an almost identical fate.

"I surrender!" Dal'serah shouted as she rounded on him, the smoking barrel of the Claymore pointed at him like the snout of a dragon.

"You were right. He does want to do you a favour," Thane did not sound like he was as amused as she was.

"Maintain your position," Shepard ordered, "Don't let the centre of this asshole's forehead out of your sights."

She looked at Dal'serah and twitched the barrel of the shotgun toward the floor. "Get on your knees. Hands where I can see them."

She looked up as the communications terminal on the far wall began spitting curses in a familiar, unpleasant voice.

"Dal'serah, you limp-dicked piece of shit," Vido Santiago swore, "You better hope that Shepard kills you before I get my hands on you."

"I'll do whatever you want," Dal'serah promised her, his four beige eyes rolling in terror as he laced his fingers behind his head and sunk to his knees in the rubble and broken glass that carpeted his office.

"This is what I wanted," Shepard replied. She shot Dal'serah once in the face and holstered the Claymore at the small of her back as she stepped over the bloody pool spreading across the floor to get to the terminal. Encrypted communications, of course, but EDI could take care of that without much of a problem.

"Thanks for that, Shepard," Vido said pleasantly as she leaned on the panel, "I'm glad we could talk person-to-person. There's no reason this has to go on."

"Oh, I agree," Shepard said, equally agreeable. Her fresh bullet wounds throbbed as she leaned casually on the communications terminal, "So you want to surrender then?"

Vido laughed - he was much better at maintaining his composure than the late Solem Dal'serah.

"You know, I kind of like you Shepard," He said, "Despite the fact that you've cost my organization, I don't know, about a billion credits, give or take a million. Maybe more after you blow the shit out of Illio - you are going to blow it up, aren't you?"

"And burn all your crops," Shepard confirmed.

"Yeah, I guessed that you would," There was a rustling noise on the other end of the communications link and Shepard recognized the sizzle of a chemical lighter. "But still, I think I like you. So I'm willing to make a few compromises so we can avoid having to kill each other."

"There isn't going to be any compromise," Shepard put her hands on her hips and turned her back on the communications terminal, staring out into the dim, cluttered maze of shipping containers. Broken glass ground and shattered under her heels. "You can surrender yourself to Citadel authorities or I can hunt you down and kill you. Two options, period."

"Come on Shepard, be reasonable," Vido sounded annoyed, as though she was holding out in some petty bargaining match.

"Do you think I won't do it?" She asked quietly.

"Shepard, I know a lot about you, I did some homework after Zorya. I know you're a tough old military bitch with a hate for batarians that impresses even me. I know that you've done great things, things everyone else in the galaxy said were impossible. Hell, I know you'll do a fuck of a lot of damage to my organization.

"But this isn't the first hostile takeover attempt I've dealt with. You have no idea what kind of resources I control. I know you don't have any idea what you are fucking with. I can offer you creds, favours, information, anything. It's a lot healthier to make friends then enemies out here in the Terminus, with no Council or Alliance to fall back on when the pressure's on," Vido replied, smug and confident as he exhaled against the microphone, his breath trembling over the speakers. "Let's just make a deal."

"I was talking to your old friend Zaeed the other day. He told me that you don't have a very good track record on deals," Shepard replied as Thane appeared at the door. He gave her a questioning look, one sleek brow ridge raised over his dark eyes and she rolled her eyes and mimed shooting herself in the temple. He smiled, despite himself, and Shepard turned back to the scratched screen and speakers.

"Zaeed hasn't told you the whole story, Vido snarled, some of his hard-won composure melting away. Shepard could see him leaning close to the microphone, his thick eyebrows drawn down in a glare. She smiled. "Like he's so fucking innocent. You know what kind of man he is, how can you believe that bullshit?"

"Zaeed is a bitter, angry, violent man and he's more than a little bit insane," Shepard said, as Zaeed and Garrus appeared behind Thane, battle-scarred armour glittering in the dim light. "But you are a two-faced, drug dealing terrorist."

Vido offered no denial.

"I think I'll take my chances with him."

"Fuck you Shepard," Vido snarled, his composure finally cracking, "You and Zaeed are two of a kind. Holier than thou murders."

"I am not a murderer," Shepard replied, keeping her back to the terminal to hide her frown.

"And you're not a terrorist either, right? No, you're some white fucking knight, riding into the Terminus Systems to slay the monsters and save the princesses. Bullshit. I look at you and you know what I see? A merc in white armour, who works for terrorists and kills people for money."

Shepard finally looked back over her shoulder and took a deep, calming breath. She leaned close to the microphone and let a smile warm her voice as it dropped to a silky purr,"Watch your back Vido."

She cut the feed and turned back to her crew. Zaeed stood over Dal'serah's corpse, prying the pistol off his belt. He stood and looked at it for a long moment, as Shepard nodded to the rest of her team and they withdrew in silent understanding, disappearing into the maze of crates.

"You couldn't have saved the bastard for me?" Zaeed asked, a sort of raw humour in his voice.

"You knew Dal'serah?" Shepard asked. "I thought you and Vido had your disagreement because he wanted to bring the batarian's in."

"I fought with Dal'serah once," Zaeed said. His face was slack, the features relaxed as the eyes roamed in far away memories. Shepard felt as if she was slipping out of the conversation, Zaeed conversing with his own vivid recollections. The man could give Thane a run for his money. "Vido convinced me to just give him a chance. Said if I still didn't like it he'd drop the issue."

Zaeed laughed, and it was a sound utterly devoid of any humour,"Stupid sentimental bastard I was, I believed him. We went on a drop into Eclipse territory, busting open an eezo mine that was being exploited by the Blood Pack. Had a mission to bust out some rich asshole's daughter or girlfriend or something. Small time bullshit.

"It was just one stupid cock-up after another. Stop Dal'serah from tossing the men away on pointless frontal assault, stop Dal'serah from giving away what we were after, stop Dal'serah from blowing the hell out of the bunker that contained our bloody target. By the time we met up with Vido I was pissed as I've ever been."

"And you told him you didn't want to work with Dal'serah?"

"I told him I would rather take a goddamn bullet in the head upfront rather than from some idiot on the battlefield when Dal'serah fucked up. And Vido told me I'd get my wish." Zaeed smiled unpleasantly.

"Dal'serah stood there and laughed. And then Vido took my gun and he put it to my head and..." He lifted the weapon as his voice trailed off and Shepard saw it was an old-fashioned Alliance pistol, similar to the kind she had first trained with on Callisto station. "My pistol, the pistol I pulled off my first corpse and carried around all those first years when times were still good."

"I didn't know," Shepard said lamely, unsure of what her role in this was becoming. Zaeed had never felt the need to confide in her before.

"Vido must have given it to Dal'serah as some sort of goddamn souvenir. And you know something, Shepard? That pisses me off more than anything else," Zaeed laughed at himself, sticking his old gun through one of the straps of his weapons harness.

"I might have shot Dal'serah," Shepard said carefully, "But Vido's still out there."

Zaeed looked over his shoulder at her, studying her face, and turned back to the body.

"When the time comes..."

"I'll save him for you."


	6. Pills and Wine

_Shepard was lost in a world of wavering fire and lime, where shapes and images burned away, curled up into nothing and were reborn all around her a moment later. _

"_All soldiers have nightmares," Anderson said as he sat beside her on a sterilized cot in an Alliance hospital. Her days were long, full of syringes and steel tubes that shot radiation at her brain half a dozen times a day. All this and she was still half-lost, her consciousness clinging to the blood-soaked stone of Torfan, and his voice sounded far away. She could see him in her mind, his face distorted and inflated, hovering over her, big as the world. _

"_I don't," She replied. Her thoughts rolled over each other in ponderous circles. Thinking hurt, the act weighed down by too many pills to count._

"_You will," He promised, and his words echoed around her as his face drew in and crumpled, his warm mocha skin melting into a hurricane of slick brown oil._

_He had been right, though it had taken years and a horrific death to make it so. She always dreamed now. And they were always nightmares. Most of the time she dreamed of the grey fields and a legion of marching dead that clawed, and gasped, and reached for her with long, cold fingers. _

_Sometimes she saw Mindoir as it had been on that day, streaks of fire in a sapphire summer sky, the alien cough of machine gun fire among stone houses, the screams and prayers of the dying as they beseeched a deaf and useless god. _

_Sometimes she was in the orphanage on Yugurtz, among the hollow-eyed orphans and the crow-black nuns with their gowns slithering across the floor. They brandished rulers and broom handles, or stood with their hands bone white and dripping icy water, whispering soft shapeless words about Christ and sin and forgiveness. _

_Other times it was of the gutters and the blood red sky, the narrow alleyways between decaying old buildings, the hunger and pain of the streets._

_And she dreamed of war, of airless purple Torfan and Commander Dorn whispering to her through a mouthful of blood, of Bines and Forlorn and Godfrey. She fought in the Blitz again. She dreamed of Saren, of Virmire, Noveria, Feros, Illos, of the heretic geth and the terrible, merciless Reapers, the demons of dark space descending on warm, brightly lit worlds._

_Sometimes she was drifting in a dark place, smeared with fire and the far off pin-points of the stars. As she moved through the deadly vacuum, she found absolute serenity. Time passed rapidly around her, stars rising out of clouds of orange stellar dust, burning, withering and exploding before her eyes as she sailed through the depths of existence. Then she would realize she was not breathing, and the terrible silver curve of Alchera would rise up from the darkness, as a vice of cold steel closed over her throat and she would be choking, kicking, screaming in silence as all heat drained out of her and every muscle betrayed her. _

_She dreamed of dying and mindless, animalistic terror among the stars._

Shepard had lived a full life, and there was much of it that deserved to be remembered. In her feverish, morphine-tainted dreams, all experiences melted together, the colours twisting around each other in an eternal fiendish moment of smeared neon and blood. There was always so much blood.

Shepard woke shaking in dim quiet, with her side only aching a little bit. It took her a moment to remember where she was, and she lifted the thin med-lab sheets to wipe the sticky traces of medi-gel off the reddish lines where Chakwas had gone wrist deep to repair torn organs and soft tissues. She was thirsty.

"Doctor Chakwas said that you should not move for another four hours, Shepard." EDI informed, as Shepard swung her legs out of bed.

"You can wake Chakwas if you feel you have to, EDI," Shepard replied, glaring menacingly at the blue orb of radiant light along the wall. "But if you do, I'm going to have a good solid minute to wreak havoc in the AI core before she comes to put me down again."

There was a moment of contemplative silence.

"Just don't over exert yourself," EDI said finally, "And take your pills."

Shepard signed off and examined the pill bottles Chakwas had left on her bedside table. Antibiotics and painkillers, the little yellow kind that people had called 'BB's' during her command school days, and popped for recreational fun just as often as practical use. She took two of each with her glass of water, as recommended, and went on a search for pants.

Shepard found a pair of standard issue trousers and a clean white t-shirt, both of which were a couple sizes too large for her, and pulled them on. No socks or shoes. She stuck the pill bottles in her pocket and strode barefoot out of the medical bay, squinting around the deserted mess hall.

It was the ship's night cycle, the lights dim and casting deep purple shadows everywhere. The BB's were making her light headed, smearing the details of things together in a sort of blissful wash of milky pastel. She made her way around the long tables and their benches to the stove, craving cookies and tea with a sudden, irresistible power.

No cookies to be found, Rupert always hid them, but there was a half-full kettle on the stove, so Shepard got a mug and some tea bags. She spent several minutes staring at her hands as the water boiled, and the kettle began to whistle. It took her a moment to remember what she was doing exactly, but she eventually managed to get the drink made. She settled down on the nearest bench, cradling the mug between her hands and watching long tongues of brown floating out of the steeping bag of tea leaves and spreading through the hot water. It was all intensely interesting to her.

"Are you certain you should be up?"

Shepard swung her head up, the world spinning only a little to find Thane standing by the nearest steel pillar, half-concealed in the shadows of the ship's night cycle. Deep pools of shadow hid his eyes and made him look almost menacing, a vague shape etched in darkness.

"Probably not," Shepard replied calmly, blowing on her tea,"Water's still hot."

After a moment, Thane stepped out of the shadows and got a cup to make some of the thin, golden-coloured tea he liked. He took a seat across from her, stirring honey into his mug as he studied her thoughtfully.

"Are you enjoying your pain killers?" He sounded vaguely amused and Shepard tore her eyes away from the overhead light fixtures, which were actually very interesting when she really, really looked at them, and met his eyes. Thane was smiling, the corners of his full lips pulled up in the tiniest show of emotion.

"They're pretty awesome," Shepard laughed, "Man, why is it you're always around when my consciousness is getting altered? I swear, I'm normally very sober and reserved. Prudish. Square," She made a square shape in the air between them using her thumbs and pointer fingers, "Like that."

Thane laughed, a gravelly cascade of warmth that wrapped around her and made Shepard grin like a big idiot.

"I don't mind," He said, "You seem to avoid me when you're sober."

Shepard frowned. This was not good. She had promised to have this conversation with him after docking, but the internal bleeding had taken priority. Now she was flying high on post-op painkillers, and her traitorous brain provided her with no concrete out. She shrugged after a moment, her boney shoulders stabbing up under the baggy white cotton of her stolen shirt.

"Sorry. I think about you all the time, if that helps. I'm just... I'm so..." She paused, and gave up trying to explain it to him after a moment. She shrugged again. "I can face everything that scares or intimidates me in the galaxy, except when it comes to having a real conversation with someone."

Thane raised a sleek green brow at her, and Shepard looked away, sipped her tea and grimaced as it burnt her tongue. The sting of it pierced even the warm envelope of pain killers, and she sat for a moment, running the singed tip over her teeth and thinking.

"I wish I could give you a real reason," She said finally, "I wish I could explain to you why I'm so afraid of this whole... thing between us. But I can't. All I know is that every time I think about it my guts freeze up, and I start gagging on my own tongue like an idiot. Every part of me that has anything to do with being a normal human being is absolutely paralyzed."

Thane watched her for a moment, as though he expected her to continue and she just shrugged helplessly.

"That's it. I'm just a freak, and it has nothing to do with you," She said.

"I appreciate you being honest with me," Thane said quietly.

Shepard smiled. She hoped that they could go back to being friends now, nice and normal. She could have the occasional sexy daydream, catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye and wonder what might have been, but in the end they would just be comrades, fighting side by side, respecting each other only in the way that soldiers did. The way that was safe, the way that she knew how to handle.

"Have dinner with me," he said, and it took a moment for her drug-addled brain to register that.

"What?" She asked, blinking.

"Is this not what people do?" Thane asked, feigning wide-eyed innocence as she gaped at him, "I'd suggest some sort of vid to go along with it, but I know you don't watch very many of them."

"I... is this some kind of joke?" Shepard asked, a flash of indignation colouring the blank shock of the moment.

"Of course not. I want to have dinner with you. A 'date' is what I believe people call them," Thane drank some tea and she frowned at him, her lip finding its way between her teeth where she chewed it thoughtfully. He seemed to find something about that amusing, and there was a maddening flash of a smile on his lips as he lowered his mug again.

"Where are we going to have dinner?" She asked him, her voice growing heated. This was just ridiculous. It was making her angry how ridiculous it was. "We can't exactly stop over at Zakera Cafe or anything."

"We could have it in your quarters. Or mine if you prefer, though yours are undoubtedly finer and more private." Thane watched her struggle with a sort of cool, collected serenity that just furthered her irritation. As if this were the most normal thing in the world - as though she could just put everything aside for a few hours and eat dinner with him, like she was some sort of human being.

"Did I not just describe how I'm an anti-social freak that is pretty much incapable of having a normal conversation with someone?" She asked, as her doped brain struggled for some real, convincing reason to say no.

"You did. But I don't plan on giving up until you give me a good reason to," Thane replied placidly.

"And that's not a good reason?"

"No. If I didn't find your quirks... interesting, I never would have pursued this in the first place."

Well, that made a lot of sense. Damn him.

"What if I say no?" She asked, her tone and her eyes full of challenge.

"Say no and we'll find out," He said. "Or say yes. I would be lying if I said I wouldn't prefer that."

Shepard chewed her lip and thought for a long, careful moment. Maybe it would be best to actually go on one 'date' with him, if only to prove what a terrible idea this really was. Words did not seem capable of convincing him how broken she truly was, at her core, under all these layers of cultivated confidence.

"Alright, fine. But I want to go on record as saying that this is a terrible idea."

"Not the most romantic acceptance, but a man takes what he can get," He smiled again and drank more of his tea, apparently satisfied with the results of their conversation. Silence stretched between them.

"What happens if this doesn't work out, Thane?" Shepard asked, looking up from her cooling tea and fixing him with her intense black and orange eyes.

"I don't know," He confessed, "But fear is not a good reason for holding back."

Unable to find a reply, Shepard drained her mug and stood up, setting the cup in the sink as she collected her thoughts. She lifted one hand to her face, watching the light wavering over her long, golden fingers. She was struck for a moment by the delicate shape of the bones, how paper thin the blood vessels and fine golden skin that covered them really was. It was easy to forget that she really was just flesh and bone, an organic machine swaddled around a human mind and heart.

"Tonight then?" She asked, not turning around.

"Tonight. Do you have any requests that I should forward to Mr. Gardner?" Thane brought his own cup to the sink, appearing behind her without a whisper of sound. His cool fingers brushed the back of the hand resting on the sink, only briefly, and she did not pull away.

"Rupert knows. Just... tell him it's for me and he'll know."

"I look forward to seeing you," His voice was quiet, packed with subtle undertones that sent a ribbon of heat all the way down to her groin. It excited the hell out of her, at the same time as it made her feel weak kneed and helpless.

Shepard found herself alone in the mess hall - Thane had gone so suddenly and quietly that he might have evaporated into the air. Since there was no one to see her, she took a few deep, calming breaths to try and assemble her addled thoughts. She had to calm down. She had to get control of herself. Maybe she should meditate.

That was a very strange thought. It haunted her all the way up to her quarters, where she zoned out in the shower and wound up using far too much hot water. In the end, she took the other two painkillers in the bottle and collapsed onto her bed, slipping into another formless dream.

"_It wasn't your fault."_

"_I know."_

"_We had bad intelligence. They had you outnumbered a dozen to one. That you managed to do what you did was amazing. It saved a lot of lives."_

"_I know."_

"_It's not your fault that they died, Shepard."_

"_I know."_

"_It's a miracle you survived."_

"_Is it?"_

_Ten years had not made it any easier. When Alchera rose out of the murk and wrapped its frozen hand around her throat, it was almost a blessing._

Shepard woke to find her alarm buzzing on the bedside table - she had slept through it for almost an hour. She reached for it groggily and thumbed the button to silence before laying face down on the pillow for a few minutes. The ache in her side was gone, and when she lifted her shirt to look at the surgical scars, they were nothing more than faint, pinkish lines on the soft brown skin.

"I would avoid the medical bay for a couple days, if I were you, Shepard," EDI indicated, as Shepard hauled herself into a sitting position among her sheets.

The Commander managed to laugh, and the AI vanished from the terminal by the door.

Shepard got up, her mouth dry and mealy from the pain killers, and her bladder full enough to hurt. She crab-walked to the bathroom to relieved herself and brushed her teeth. She was half way through getting dressed before she remembered what she had agreed to do tonight. Her eyes flickered to the clock and she sighed.

Zipping up her jumpsuit, Shepard remembered that this was her off-duty cycle - no distracting responsibilities waited for her outside this room. She sunk into her seat and opened some star charts and notes, resolved to lose herself in work instead. She succeeded for a little while - EDI had triangulated the signals from Vido's encrypted transmission and found the system of origin. She plotted a course, frowned at it, and plotted another. She sighed, closed her files, and leaned back in her chair. This was not working the way she wanted it to. She needed something new.

Two hours later she strode out of the elevator, passing crewmen with blind purpose and intensity as she headed for Miranda's office.

"Shepard. It isn't time for our weekly meeting," Miranda glanced at the holographic calendar in the corner of her desk and shook her head, shaking loose curls of dark hair around her slim shoulders. "In fact, you shouldn't even be working today."

"I just want to run an idea by you," Shepard replied, sinking into her usual seat across the desk. Miranda raised an eyebrow and closed what she was working on.

Shepard took a deep breath, organizing her thoughts, before she finally said, "We aren't doing enough."

Miranda looked startled, "What do you mean? We've crippled drug traffic in Alliance space, destroyed Blue Suns profit margins, blown up a dozen ships, and killed a small army of mercenaries. It hasn't even been two months. You weren't planning to just back hand the whole organization into non-existence overnight, were you?" She sounded amused.

"When I set out to do something, I do it, no matter how impossible it might seem," Shepard replied, "And I'm telling you, we aren't doing enough. The Blue Suns can always hire more mercs and make more snake. All we're doing is giving Vido Santiago a wicked headache."

"Well what do you want to do?"

"I want him to be scared," Shepard replied. "No, I want him to be fucking terrified. If he's not wetting the bed every time his house creaks at night we're not doing our job. So I have a new plan."

Miranda stared at her for a moment, her blue eyes disbelieving - then she smiled. "What did you have in mind?"

"Illio," Shepard replied, grinning as Miranda leaned forward in anticipation, "What was different about Illio?"

"Aside from sixteen kilometres of raging fire stretching out in every direction?" Miranda thought for a long moment. "They weren't processing drugs at Illio. They were growing them."

"Exactly," Shepard smiled, "The shipments we destroyed were being sent to the sorts of planets we've been attacking. There was enough of it to give twenty processing plants a month's work, all harvested and piled up at the space port, ready for export. And we destroyed all of that with just a few hours of work."

Miranda leaned back, her smile widening into a grin as understanding blossomed between them, "How many other Illio-style planets do the Blue Suns run?"

"Thirteen," Shepard said, pushing a data pad across the desk.

Miranda picked it up and scanned the systems listed with a critical eye."You've mapped these strangely. It's all jumping around, pushing forward and then moving back, striking major planets and then weaker ones. To make sure they can't anticipate us?"

"Partly. But also because I want Vido walking on egg shells, always wondering where I'm going to be next, what I'm going to be doing, who I'm going to be killing. I want him spitting blood and pulling his hair out at the roots by the time I finally break down his door." Shepard grinned, wildly, and pushed her silver-blond curls off her forehead with both hands, "Tell me I'm crazy."

"Not crazy," Miranda replied, pulling up her own data, "Wildly ambitious, maybe. But this all makes sense. And it's going to make a lot of people very, very angry. Not just the Blue Suns. Are you sure we're ready to have half the Terminus Systems trying to blow us out of the sky?"

"Maybe not. We might get shot down and all die horrible, firey deaths," Shepard acknowledged, "But as long as the Terminus Systems are splintered and lorded over by an army of pirates and mercenaries they'll be ripe pickings for the Reapers. With the Alliance and the Council ignoring me, we have to do this alone which leaves no room for hesitation."

Miranda paused for a moment and the two of them just stared at each other, trying to read something vital in each other's eyes. "Okay."

"That's it?" Shepard asked with a grin, "I was all set to convince you."

"You have convinced me. I trust you Shepard, and if you say we can do this, I have no option other than believing that we can." Miranda lifted the data pad, "Can I keep this?"

"Yeah," Shepard stood up, "Before we do anything though, we have to go get Tali from the Flotilla and pay Aria T'Loak a visit. I want to have a little chat with our asari friend."

Miranda smiled, "I can't wait."

Shepard turned to leave, feeling a spring in her step that had not been there when she entered Miranda's office just moments before. She was feeling clear-headed, purposeful, despite the nature of her propositions. She stopped as Miranda cleared her throat tactfully behind her.

"There's something I wanted to talk to you about," Miranda said, "I was going to wait until your next on-duty cycle but since you're already here..."

"What is it?"

"Vido's put a bounty on your head."

Shepard blinked, and then she threw her head back and laughed. It felt good, she could not remember the last time she had managed anything more than a chuckle or a titter. She laughed until her sides hurt and sank down in her seat again, bracing her hands against her knees.

"How much?" She managed to ask.

"Eight hundred thousand credits," Miranda said, her expression hovering between amusement and confusion as Shepard continued to shake with laughter. "Why are you laughing?"

"I don't know what else to do," Shepard replied honestly, between gasps. "Does he think that's going to intimidate me? Does he really think that I could kill geth, Saren, the Collectors, half his organization, and then be brought down by some two-bit Terminus bounty hunters? It's funny."

Instead of calming down, she just laughed harder until the force of air slamming through her often-broken nose made a harsh braying sound. The noise only made the whole situation funnier and Miranda finally joined in. The two of them laughed until they were gasping, leaning back in their seats with their arms folded over aching sides and stomachs. Shepard wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and took a few deep calming breaths.

"Was that good for you?" Miranda asked, her blue eyes twinkling.

"Better than sex," Shepard grinned, pushing herself up again on wobbly legs.

"I still think we should be careful," Miranda said, a measure of calm returning to her milk-white face as she sat forward in her seat and leaned over her terminal again. "Eight hundred thousand credits is a lot of money."

"The only person I would worry about would be Zaeed, and he's never going to kill me and take money from Vido," Shepard replied with a wave of her hand.

"EDI intercepted a message Vido sent to Thane, trying to hire him to kill you," Miranda replied, "She forwarded it to me."

Shepard frowned, and waved a hand dismissively, "Thane is even less likely to kill me than Zaeed. Though maybe he should tell Vido he'll take the contract and demand his money up front. We could use it right now."

Miranda remained serious, "Are you sure you can trust him, Shepard? I know you two are... close. But he's still an assassin."

"And a good man," Shepard replied, holding up a hand, "I know that it's your job to be concerned about stuff like this, so thank you for being diligent. But Thane should be on the very bottom of your list of worries. He'll never betray me."

Miranda stared at her for a moment, her eyes narrowed. She leaned back in her seat with an air of studied nonchalance and leaned one elbow against the back of her chair, "You seem certain."

"As certain as I am of you."

"What exactly is going on between you two?"

"That," Shepard said with an enigmatic smile, "Is none of your damn business."

"Shepard," EDI said, appearing at Miranda's office terminal, "Kasumi would like to see you on the observation deck."

"I'll be there in a minute, EDI," Shepard stretched, her spine snapping back into place as she gave Miranda one last cocksure grin, "I'm glad you're on board, Miranda. I'm glad you're here."

"So am I."

Shepard left the office feeling strangely carefree. With these people fighting by her side, it was almost possible to imagine she could actually do everything she needed to, that the Reapers might fall when they finally made their ominous arrival. The future of their presence was a crushing weight on her shoulders, making most days dark and full of a constant, smothering dread. It was nice to feel it lift, if only briefly.

"EDI said you wanted to see me?" Shepard said as the door to Kasumi's room slid open. She stopped. She had been expecting to find the thief alone, curled up in her corner of the couch as usual, but instead she found Kelly standing in the middle of the room, prying open a bottle of wine, while Gabriella giggled about something she had just said. The door slid open again behind her and she found Miranda blocking her one path of escape, and knew something sinister was brewing. The four women smiled at her.

"What?" Shepard asked.

"A little bird told us that you have a date with Thane tonight," Kasumi grinned, "We thought we should help you prepare."

"I brought some clothes," Kelly said, filling the wine glasses arranged on the narrow table in front of her, "You'll fit mine much better than Miranda's."

"I brought the wine," Gabriella said, her smile broadening, "It'll be easier if you get a little drunk."

"I'm here to make sure you don't try to fight your way free," Miranda said, crossing her slim arms across her chest and smiling wickedly.

"I trusted you," Shepard said, pointing an accusatory finger at her.

"How silly of you," Miranda replied, her smile growing more devilish by the second. "I'll take a bullet for you, Shepard, but when it comes to torture like this, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere for help."

"Grunt would never do this to me," Shepard crossed her arms defiantly.

"That's not going to win you any arguments," Miranda pointed at the couch, "Sit. We have everything all worked out."

"Is that supposed to be comforting?"

"No. It's supposed to inspire fear and obedience."

Shepard sat, and a glass of wine was pressed into her hands. All other claims notwithstanding, it would be much easier to endure whatever it was they had planned for her if she was drunk. Kelly was quick to give her a refill when she immediately drained the glass.

"Don't you have anything harder?" Shepard asked as she raised the glass to her lips.

"No. Now stop complaining and enjoy yourself," Kasumi ordered, and drew a portable extranet terminal out from beside the couch, setting it in the middle of table. She fiddled with her omni-tool as Kelly produced a duffle bag and set about pulling out slips of brightly coloured cloth and spreading them across the back of the couch and Kasumi's narrow bed.

"This is my favourite," Kelly said, holding up a red silk dress and letting it ripple in the overhead lighting. It was cut short, had a plunging neck line and superficial little spaghetti straps.

Shepard gave her a flat, uncommunicative look and Kelly shook the dress in the style of a matador. Little gold threads were woven into the silk and they sparkled as the cloth rippled and moved.

"No," Shepard said flatly.

"Every time you reject something without trying it on you have to slam a glass of wine," Gabby informed her.

Shepard slammed the glass and Kelly set the dress aside with a sigh.

Shepard was trying to decide whether she should be angry, mortified or both. She wanted to know who had overheard her late-night conversation with Thane and thought that Kasumi, of all people, was the person to tell. She knew it was Kasumi. The idea of playing dress up with the Commander had her fingerprints all over it.

"Mordin should get some credit for this idea too," The thief said, as the terminal lit up on the table and Kelly continued to rummage through her clothes on the hunt for something appropriate. "He provided the... educational material."

Shepard almost spat out the sip of wine she had been taking from her refilled glass and eyed the terminal with horror.

"Educational material better not mean what I think it means," She coughed.

The video on the terminal was of a fully clothed male drell. His scales were deep, vibrant gold accented with patterns of chocolate brown on his arms and forehead, his cheeks a blood-red crimson so dark it seemed almost black. He swung sensual, heavily hooded eyes at the screen and smiled, his even white teeth flashing. He had been sitting and he stood up, muscles rippling under his thin clothing and Shepard felt her mouth go unaccountably dry.

"You want to watch porn?" She rasped, "What kind of party is this?"

"Not porn," Kasumi replied, "Instructional videos. What kind of friends would let you walk into a date blind?"

"If I have to choose between them and the kind of friends who force me to watch porn with them, you might be out of luck," Shepard said, though she could not seem to tear her eyes away from the broad, four-fingered hands that were slowly undoing shirt buttons on the screen, revealing tracks of burnished scales. The drell smiled again and with a jerk of his hands he pulled open his shirt, exposing a long track of seamless golden muscle, marked with only a few thin lines of brown across his pectorals and a single thin, mouth-watering sliver of ribbed red skin on his lower abdomen.

"Damn," Gabby breathed appreciatively, "Now I'm jealous."

"I'm going to memorize every inch of you," The drell on screen growled, his husky voice heavy with intoxicating sexual energy. Shepard had a hard time tearing her eyes away as Kelly held up another dress, the same brown silk number that she had worn at the party. Shepard shook her head and Kelly gave the wine glass a meaningful look.

Shepard was happy to drink. The way the golden drell was rolling his shirt down over his sculpted shoulders was doing strange things to the pit of her stomach and she needed to be distracted. When Kelly pulled out a black dress, one that looked reasonably long and did not show inordinate amounts of cleavage she stood, feeling only a little wobbly.

"I'll try that one on," She said.

"This? I didn't even mean to bring this," Kelly said, shocked, "I think I bought it for a funeral."

"Look, do you want me to play along with this or not?" Shepard asked, as the drell demonstrated how to stroke the dark red stripe on his abdomen, still staring straight ahead with sizzling intensity. The camera man had managed to capture his shots so that it always looked like the drell was staring straight at her. She stripped down to her athletic underwear and the four other women unleashed a simultaneous groan.

"You're not going to wear that tonight are you?" Miranda asked. "What happened to the lingerie I gave you?"

"My clothes are not coming off tonight," Shepard replied heatedly, "And that underwear was barely worthy of the name."

Kelly and Miranda exchanged exasperated looks as Shepard shimmied into the dress, pulling the thick straps over her arms and turning so Kelly could do up the zipper on the back. She spread her arms and turned in a circle, letting them have the full effect.

"Congratulations," Kasumi said from her position in the corner of the couch, "You look slightly less like a nun than usual."

"I do not look like a nun," Shepard huffed. In truth, she wished that Kelly had brought along something with sleeves. And some pants. Even in this dress there were painful amounts of scars showing, all along her arms and past the knee-length hem of the dress. "Nuns don't wear jumpsuits."

"Nuns hide their bodies under shapeless black cloth and freeze up if anyone dabs a spot of colour on them," Kasumi replied, "You are a nun, Shepard."

"Whatever. Find me some slut suit and I'll show you how ridiculous I look in it, if you need proof." Her glass was full of wine again, and Shepard picked it up, trying to avoid looking at the terminal. The drell had the button of his trousers undone, and the line of red thickened as it vanished under the cloth. He had an expression of ecstasy on his face as he traced it with his conjoined finger.

"How is this not porn again?" Shepard asked, as he made a deep, rumbling noise in the back of his throat, an agile pink tongue sliding out of his mouth to wet his full lips.

"It's not porn if you don't see the full package," Gabby replied, "Damn, how many crunches do you think this dude does? More than Thane? More than Jacob?"

"I have no idea," Shepard replied, tearing her eyes away from the screen as Kelly handed her the next option.

"God Kelly, I said slut not street walker."

It went on like that for a while. Shepard squeezed in and out of a dozen different dresses, and the drell took them through some of his erogenous zones with embarrassing thoroughness. True to Gabby's promise there was no full nudity or any demonstrations of the most obvious tactics, but Shepard learned all about his sensitive abdomen and the siantiatic ridge at the base of his spine, and the best places to kiss and caress his red throat and cheeks.

By the time the video ended, the drell was panting, his lips parted and his pants bulging in a way that made Shepard's cheeks burn. Her four captors made crude, poorly worded double-entendres about size and elbowed each other mercilessly. Shepard drained the last of the wine out of her glass and looked down at the dress she was crammed in to.

It was French or Spanish or asari or some damn thing that was supposed to be impressive and stylish. They had gone through so many styles and cuts that Shepard could feel her head swimming. Or maybe that was the wine, she seemed to remember there having been two full bottles the last time she checked. She was hovering in exactly the right level of drunk, before the world stopped making sense and after all common restraints had given way to empty optimistic positive energy. She had even managed to ignore her scars enough to realize that whatever this dress was it looked pretty alright.

"Oh please, Shepard, for the love of all that is holy, just wear that one," Kelly moaned, collapsing into the couch and snatching up the last bottle, draining the few traces of white wine still lingering around the bottom. "I have no more strength to fight with you."

"Look, I didn't ask you to do this," Shepard reminded her, craning her neck around trying to get a feeling of how her ass looked in the dress. Pretty good, if she said so herself.

"That's definitely the winner, Shep," Kasumi murmured from her seat, still nursing her second glass of wine and watching the more lubricated members of their get together with sharp, dark eyes. "He won't be able to take his eyes off of you."

The current option was black, like the funeral dress. The similarities ended there. While the other had been modestly cut, this one clung to her skin with open sensuality. The silk held tight against the silhouette of her waist, the slim lines of her hips and the swell of her shapely behind. It was backless, impossible to wear a bra with, and hung around her neck in a halter-style. The neck did not plunge too scandalously, but it was deep and the cloth clung to and outlined her small breasts in a way that was... distracting. There was metallic orange thread worked along the hem, shining in the overhead lights like seams of fire. Stiff ribbons of the same colour were folded into an elaborate knot and stitched onto the dress under the bust line like a sash.

"Alright," she said, "I'll wear it."

A collective cheer went through all assembled, congratulations were exchanged as though a great war had just been won and Shepard took a bow. Kelly had shoes for her, which were even smaller than Miranda's, and Shepard waved her off.

"You aren't going to wear your combat boots with that are you?" Kelly asked.

"No. I just won't bother with shoes," Shepard replied, flipping their sceptical looks away with the back of her hand. "It'll be fine."

She checked the time. Three hours until Rupert started serving dinner. She stretched and grinned at the four of them, feeling amazingly care free, as though she might actually enjoy this.

"I'm going to go sober up," she announced, "Then I'm going to top my buzz up, stop drinking, and have a 'date' that will go horribly and never be spoken of again."

They all sighed.

"Attagirl, Shep," Kasumi said, "I am loving the confidence."

"No one is more confident in their ability to fuck things up than I am," Shepard boasted, putting down her wine glass and gathering up her discarded boots and clothes.

"You are so getting interrogated tomorrow morning, Shepard!" Kasumi shouted after her as the door slid open. Shepard winced, sure that her voice was probably audible in life support at that moment.

"Unless you two wind up having breakfast together!" Miranda crowed, lifting her wine glass in a toast to the air. Apparently her father's blue prints for the perfect daughter had not included a high alcohol tolerance. Shepard was certain her shouting had carried at least as far as life support. Hell, Garrus had probably heard her in the forward batteries.

She was too warm and happily drunk to care at the moment though. Shepard made her way to elevator before she remembered that all her scars were out in the open, thick glittering tracks of orange marking her like some sort of radioactive paint. A twinge of panic boiled in her stomach, and when the elevator slid open already occupied she felt her heart jump into her throat.

"Damn," Jacob said appreciatively, "What do I have to do to get a woman to dress like that for me?"

"Go have a chat with Kasumi sometime," Shepard replied. For some reason, having Jacob lose his cool like that had made her scars less important, and she found herself feeling genuinely sexy for the first time in... well... a long time. Cybernetic super solider Commander Shepard was a title that came with very little sex appeal.

The elevator made its way up to the combat deck and Shepard caught a glimpse of a few crew members, most of whom did double takes at the sight of her bare foot in a dress, holding an armful of clothes. Jacob stepped out of the elevator and paused for a moment before turning around and fixing her with his deep brown eyes.

"What did you say about Kasumi?" He asked. He sounded confused, but only in the way that people always do when they are trying to pretend they do not know something.

"Figure it out," Shepard replied, and the doors slid shut as the elevator lurched toward her quarters.

Alone, her thoughts drifted toward the night ahead and she felt her stomach quiver nervously through the numbing embrace of wine. She needed to get her mind in order, to get some goddamn control of herself and stop spazzing out about a meal.

How many times had she eaten dinner or lunch in life support with Thane while they listened to music or talked about some mutual interest - or been perfectly comfortable being alone with him for hours on end, as though she were utterly at home?

There was nothing for her to worry about.

Shepard pulled the dress off and diligently reminded herself not to throw it in a pile on the floor. She folded it over the back of her chair and got into her lounge clothes, a tank top and cotton boxer shorts instead. She perched on the edge of her bed and squeezed her eyes closed and decided to have a stern word with herself.

_Okay, Shepard, _she thought, _Just don't do everything you always do and things will be just fine. Just be sexy and confident and don't spill on yourself or vomit anywhere._

The last time she had been on a date was in command school, when spilling and vomiting had been a regular part of liquor-soaked social interactions.

_Don't chew your lip, don't pick at your fingers, don't laugh through your nose because the break makes you sound like an asthmatic donkey, and that's pretty much the opposite of sexy. Don't drink too much. Don't talk about god or politics or the time you spaced out and had a horrifically inappropriate day dream about him on that very couch. The couch he'll be sitting on. _

Shepard's eyes popped open as she realized what she was doing. This dinner date was a bad idea - she had known that from the start. Yet here she was thinking of ways that she could avoid messing it up, when really that was the opposite of what she should be doing. If anything, she should be getting slobbering drunk right now so that she could totally ruin her chances with Thane.

Shepard flopped backwards on the sheets and cupped a hand to her forehead. She closed her eyes and took a few deep, centering breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth. She thought for a long moment, running over her own thoughts, trying to get some grasp on what was happening in her own mind.

For the first time, Shepard found herself admitting she had no idea what she wanted anymore.


End file.
